


World Without End

by Lastactiontricia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Michael Possessing Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 02:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13917264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lastactiontricia/pseuds/Lastactiontricia
Summary: Summary: AU where the world has already ended, Michael has come through the rift between universes and possessed Dean. The reader is left 5 years after the world ended, heading home to the bunker for a final confrontation. Italics indicate thoughts or emphasis. Point of view switches in paragraph headers.





	World Without End

 

**Warnings:  Violence, scars, manipulation, death. Some cutting. It can be messed up so be warned.**

 

 

 

 

**_You-_ **

 

Nothing Gold can Stay  
Chapter 1

In the beginning…

You-

Every world has its monsters. 

Sometimes it just gets harder to see who they are.

One day, one of those creatures was going to end you. You knew this like you knew the color of your eyes or the rumble of the Chevelle’s engine.  
But this isn’t about the end, its about the beginning. That long roadmap of you.  
Your end began with letters.

In a world shaped by all the things people didn't know- by the beasts and evil that stalked their streets and not just their nightmares- you were one of the people who stalked back. It wasn't perfect, you lived in the shadows, in the world behind the world, and you hunted the monsters that had ruined your life, ripped the veil from your eyes and opened them to the terrible truth. A demon had taken your brother, made you kill him. More than once. 

But not before he’d cut a bloody swath thru your parents, blood shining thru his smile. At seventeen you were an orphan. A killer. Did the house behind you shudder in horror, could it feel it in its foundations-the blood creeping in that would never be wiped clean?

Demons were shitty like that. 

But the time you were into your thirties, you'd become the lightest and darkest moments of people's lives. A hand in the night, a bloody savior, a terrifying reminder of sharp teeth and claws-of when they couldn't pretend anymore. That was the worst part, the eyes that wouldn't meet yours, the disbelief already creeping back in. The empty thanks- stuttered out like a profanity. The lies we tell ourselves are sometimes what keeps our world revolving, we block out the impossible, forget the pain so we move on.   
But you never could.

You knew the Winchesters- God who didn't- had hunted with them a few times when you wound up on the same case. In an already small world of people who did the impossible, they had carved out a reputation for having been dealt the shittiest of hands, always a joker in their deck- always an apocalypse on their horizon. It was hard to tell where the myth ended, and the men began.

Out of all the cases you worked, werewolves, vampires, demons; there was one kind of case that seemed to follow you. It came up with a regularity that was alarming, in your world there were no coincidences. Cursed objects. There was something about you and cursed objects, something about the Midwest that made them congregate there like a sale on doom. You'd found more than any hunter you'd never met, kept stumbling upon them like shells on the beach. You mentioned the irregularity to Dean after a particularly bad case of a cursed compass. It was beautiful, as evil things often are, its scrollwork inspired you to run your fingers over it before boxing it up. That little gold troublemaker had been inscribed with Latin - mutare fata- and it made things turn bad. It took up the last space in a storage locker you already couldn’t afford. 

On the next case you worked together, Dean told you about his dad's storage lockers, about what happened after hunters died and those left behind didn't know what to do with the innocuous plutonium. He rubbed his hand over his face, tired of loose ends that turned into nooses, and mentioned the bunker, a potential fort Knox for the A-bombs of the supernatural. You offered to travel around, checking John's old storage and shipping them back to the bunker along with your collection. 

It felt weird to send them without a letter.

Those first few you just wrote a dry description, storing recommendations, and some quick thanks. Then there were a few odd ones, even for you, and Dean sent a reply.

You wrote back a reply with the next package, laughing about the ins and outs of how you'd found it. Before you knew it, he was writing you back from all over, the back sides of napkins, a smoothed-out receipt, the endless supply of hotel notebooks. He sent you matches from every shitty motel after you admitted you'd forgotten yours in a salt and burn. You gave him recs for food stops in several states, mapping out towns by the pie in Des Moines, the burger in Poughkeepsie, that gnocchi in Fort Lauderdale. What started as information began to resemble snatches of souls, pieces of the puzzle of each of you.

You made excuses. This was a way to get to know them, for them to get to know you; have some trust, maybe some help. But it made you feel things at night, when the wind was the only thing to talk to. Two years of letters, sometimes when you made it back to your P.O. box there were a dozen, sometimes there were none. After all the known cursed objects were safety locked up in the bunker- you kept writing. It became your therapy, putting the horror and the joy, the tears and the disappointments on paper. Drawing in the margins the small snatches of beauty in this life that you could find-the sunset in Florida, the trees along the mountainous ridge in North Carolina steepling up like a church.

When you did meet up with them; that nest of vampires in Texas, that rugarou in Elizabethtown, you never spoke of what had been written, but Dean knew you preferred the 44 mag to the 45, and that your back up was a silver knife lifted from a witch. He knew you struggled with locks, taking over immediately when called for. You knew he always had coffee but would drink yours because it was better. He made you draw all the sigils, knowing they would be perfect. He still kept the small portrait of him and Sam you’d drawn on a napkin for fun, tucked safely into his wallet like a secret. He always had change for the jukebox and plans A-M when things went wrong. He always called you for parts for the Impala, you knew every junk yard and classic parts dealers from Pennsylvania to Kansas, could always find what he was looking for. 

You knew about his chemical help and he knew about your insomnia. He carried your bullets and you made his coffee and everything clicked into place like a well-oiled watch. He knew you'd never take the doll cases, he'd just get coordinates and you'd text him the information you had. One Chucky had been enough to fuel your nightmares forever. 

You carried pieces of Dean, resembling a patchwork suitcase, polaroids that were worn by remembrance. You took all those small things, these snatches of life and built a bridge out of them. 

You wondered if you looked inside yourself if you would see his letters like graffiti on the wall of your soul. But your hearts were birds that had never found a harbor, and those restless wings beat furiously against the cage of shouldn't and couldn't; the risk of never and the fear of always- this Mobius strip of longing and pretending not to be was exhausting. 

But it was comfortable. You had backups for bumps in the night, burgers and beer afterwards, morning coffee before going back to the mission-the cause you both carried. Someone to sew you up, carry you when you couldn't walk anymore. 

Dean-  
Though Sam was a given, a constant, Dean collected friends like blessings. The constellation of them lit up his world, his perpetual night. He liked writing, thought it was an easy way to be honest with giving away too much. Never mind the thrill those letters gave him, tamped out ruthlessly before it could be born. It was easy to pretend it was only work, pretend that the affection between them would never be more. 

She always wore hats when he saw her. A part of him lived for the small moment at the end of a hunt that she would rip the hat off and run her fingers thru her hair, the smell rippling out to tease him. Sawdust and smoke. Like a bonfire. She'd stitched herself into the fabric of their lives, one sewn up wound at a time. 

Her and Sam even had a book club, calling each other monthly to go over it like the nerds they were. He read the books, secretly, wanting to know what shaped her thoughts. He’d listen to the skype conversations from the thresholds of rooms, hanging out in the periphery, just out of reach. Planets that revolved around each other and never touched. 

Don't shit where you eat was Dean’s motto.

So, things became comfortable- he never told, and she never asked, and they were friends. The things that danced in his head between sleeping and wakefulness were nothing. It was enough.

There were a thousand crumpled up letters he burned long after Sam went to bed, nursing his beer as he watched his hopes burn with them. It was cathartic, writing letters to her he couldn’t send. Putting things on paper in the middle of the night, like nighttime made it ok, made it unreal. 

There was one he kept, it was going threadbare with all the secrets it carried, worn thinner than any paper should be.

 

So, here's the thing. I've never been the write it down romantic crap kinda guy. But in this life, you never know when you're gonna get the chance, and if you do, you should take it. I can't get you out of my head. That last hunt where you were sweaty and covered in blood from that final machete swing, when you pushed back your hair like you knew I was looking, God I wanted to tell you then. But I didn't. Always with the adios. I watched you drive off, blasting Zeppelin, and I ached. I wanted you to stay. I always want you to stay. I love the way you treat Sam's wounds first, that knowing look on your face when you glance up at me, understanding that I need to know Sam is good before I can worry about me. I love that you don't take anyone's shit, even mine. I love that you cried after salting and burning that little girl’s ghost, still so human after so much death. I love that you trust me at your back, despite your scars. I love them, your scars, the roadmap of your life. I love your silence, your laugh- full bodied and unjaded, and the fact that romcoms still can make you sigh. I love you for surviving and making it look graceful instead of painful. Hopefully you'll find this letter, I snuck in in your car so you'd have a choice. We can act like this never happened, go on hunting when our paths cross and have all the friendly beers like nothing's changed. Or you can come back to the bunker and me. And I'll love you with every day with everything I have left in this broken jaded body.  
Always  
Dean

 

YOU-  
You didn’t know how this was gonna shake out at first, just saw the obituaries and immediately knew it was just up your alley. One vic had wasted away, dropping 300lbs in a week, another had compulsively eaten currency until his stomach burst, the list went on and on. When you looked into it, this area had a long history of odd deaths, usually more spread out. Enough time in between to fly below the radar. 

When you visited the newest corpse- Scrooge McDuck himself- you found a hex bag, an unusual one all in green, in the bag of his things. It had beautiful embroidery covering it, all gold and green variants, the pattern almost Celtic but not quite, with a glowing rowan tree at the center.

You were surprised to see Sam and Dean enter the morgue, your eyebrow winging up at Sam’s slight grin. You caught them up as you all were sitting at the diner afterwards, going over the reports and the hex bag. Sam was rolling it between his fingers, trying to guess at the contents.

“Don’t over handle it Sam, these things sometimes have extra mojo to spare.” You took it back from him, gingerly with your hand protected by a napkin. Sam gave you what Dean described as the ‘bitch face’, staring at you accusingly for thinking he’d make a rookie mistake. 

“Sam does tend to get handsy.” Dean joked, eyeing you with a laugh. The smile split your face and you grinned at each other companionably.

Sam rolled his eyes, “Looks Celtic. Kinda like the Samhain hex bags.”

“Not quite, this looks…” your musing was cut off by Dean. 

“Looks like the Kate Beckinsale Underworld crap. You know the tracery or whatever on her clothes.” Dean remarked. You and Sam both looked at him then, amusement crinkling your eyes. You mouthed ‘tracery’ at Sam before snorting into your sleeve. 

Dean made the What face with his mouth full of food. 

“But we’re thinking witch for sure right?” you questioned, changing topics before Sam could mock him.   
You grabbed a napkin from the stack and did a rough sketch of Sam and Dean, sitting in that ripped red diner booth, smirking at each other the way only brothers can do-half mischief, half love. Arguing good naturedly about the case. You left it by your plate when you were done, not wanting to crumple the moment. Dean’s eyes met yours as he slid it over, peered at it and smiled, slipping it into his pocket. 

You canvassed the town, asking questions and reviewing facts. You spent that night in the Winchesters motel room looking through lore, trying to figure out information on Celtic witches. Drawing the design from the hex bag into your notes. Throwing popcorn at Dean that he managed to catch in his mouth about 20% of the time. One thing was certain- someone was giving people what they really wanted, their hearts desire; except that you wanted it so bad that the excess of it killed you. Straight Thinner shit. Sometimes Stephen King was so accurate it was scary. The more you had of whatever vice, the more you lost, if it was food, the more you ate the more weight you lost, sex, you’d go at it until you literally combusted. Getting what you wanted literally killed you.

When you finally caught up to your most likely suspect, Bronah Solas, she seemed too young to be a witch, barely old enough to live alone. You and Dean had gone looking for her, Sam had stayed behind to do some last-minute research, looking for Celtic remedies to witches in case bullets failed. The town spoke of her in a whisper, her name itself meant ‘sad light’ when you google translated it. 

She welcomed you into her home, her family’s home for generations apparently. She sold natural honey and herbal remedies, each with its own neat price tag. She brought up the rumor mill after just a few ‘standard’ questions, laughed off the witch talk with a wave of her hand. She explained that the house had a reputation- being out in the middle of nowhere and all.

She was lovely, all long pale blond hair and eyes a deeper green than Deans, bottle green. She was something out of a fairy tale, living out in the woods with no road, slight wisp of a thing that she was. But her eyes, while beautiful, seemed old. Dean was enchanted by her, he immediately gave you the ‘no friggin way’ look and had browsed around her house while she offered to make you tea.

Your eyes were harder, your bullshit meter was going off like a emf reader. You locked eyes with Bronah as she steeped the tea, you braced your hip against the counter like you were relaxed but the tension in your shoulders gave you away.

She was a witch, you were sure of it.

A canny perceptive one at that. She saw all your bullshit, saw the path of your orbits. 

“We stand in the shadows of great men, peering through their locked doors, always in the threshold but never in the light. They never let us all the way in.” She confided, her tone too low for Dean to hear browsing in the shelves. “I could give him to you. All you have to do is walk away. Have your heart’s desire with my blessing. Leave me to my vengeance.”

You gaped at her, wondering if it was written so clearly on you, this wanting. This liability. “No. You can’t have cart blanche to murder people. I don’t negotiate with terrorists.” 

She poured the tea like you were old friends, “You aren’t on my list. Either of you. Consider my offer. None will suffer except those who deserve it.”

 

You reached for your gun and she threw you back with a wave of her hand, toppling an entire bookshelf and dazing you. Dean fired on her, but she was already whirling about and the bullet buried itself into the wood molding at the back door just to the right of her head.

 

“Sruthán cad is breá leat!(Burn what you love)” She cast furiously, hands arching up in a pattern too fast to see. She was out the back before you could properly aim, your shot going wide and too late.

Dean-  
One missed shot and Dean was burning, abdomen clenching, gun dropped and eyes drilling holes in you. He had to have you, now. All the shouldn’t and couldn’t and never fell away. There was only this terrible need, only this moment. A growl fell from between his clenched teeth and he had you in his arms before either of you knew what was happening. He carried you outside, his grip tightened when he saw your face, the confusion warring with something else. 

Something he hoped was welcome.

He knew there were reasons why he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t remember them anymore. You shaped his thoughts, he felt your breath inside him, making his heart beat.

You-  
“Dean!? What the…the witch!” You thought he’d been trying to help you up, you were still sprawled in the wreckage of the bookshelf, bruises already cropping up. When he picked you up you floundered, unsure of what was happening and shocked enough to go along with it. When he set you down he still crowded you, this close he seemed huge, too solid. You tried to push him back, confused, but your willpower faded as you lit up like a struck match when he found your mouth with his. 

The world stopped spinning, this quiet bubble where you could only hear the rush of your blood and the sounds he made kissing you. After a long moment -a world ender- you finally disconnected with him, pushing him away, shoving him on his ass. You wobbled, drunk on the high, fighting the compulsion that struck you when you’d separated, stumbling toward the Impala. The deliberate footsteps already behind you made you shiver, already clenching around nothing. You braced yourself on the hood, hands curling into fists as an inferno burned inside you, sweat pouring an ocean from your skin-bitter as tears. 

Dean ran his hands up your back, banking the fire. His pelvis sat flush against your ass as he tangled his fingers up under your hat, setting free your hair as he turned your face resolutely toward his.

There was a light behind his eyes, it gleamed an unnatural green around the iris like a pulse. He kissed you, all teeth and need and it bound up your stomach in knots.   
“Waited too long…” He gritted out hoarsely as he jerked your pants down to your knees. At this point all you could do was push back at him, your own will drowning in need, in an unnatural heat that robbed you of sense and made everything narrow down to right now and the scrape of Deans jean clad dick against you. The slide and drag of his belt opening was too loud and too slow and made something leap in your stomach that wasn’t about sex. 

The moment stretched out, one heartbeat, two, three. The drum in your chest was echoed in Deans, the tension in your back from waiting was on the verge of snapping your spine. You were afraid to turn back and look at him, the hood of the Impala stretched out before you as you made needy sounds you couldn’t believe came out of your mouth. 

He nuzzled your hair, ran his teeth up your neck and then he was in you, buried as deep as he could go in one forceful thrust, your hips bruising against the grill of the Impala. Your hands shot out, bracing yourself against the hood, banging your elbows against hard metal. You let out a keening wail- it was too much, too fast and the pleasure pain of it was knife sharp and throbbing. There was no time to adjust, the glide of him inside you burned painfully but you still pushed back, meeting his thrusts against your will. 

Your body was betraying you, acting without any thought for itself. Any time you tried to force logic back to the forefront, everything became too bright, too much. Your mind would blank, and you’d be back fucking back against Dean, blood mixing with arousal. Dean started to jerkily pull out and bury himself, puppet like, with a speed that made your eyes roll in the back of your head. Each forward move threw you into the hood of the Impala, hips denting in around the point of the hood. 

Your nails scraped up and down the sleek metal, looking for purchase, something steadying, something true. The world had narrowed into a dream-like state, going fuzzy around the edges. His teeth in your shoulder, your frantic movements to push back against him, increase the friction, help set the pace. His hands on your breasts and ass and everywhere before finding yours- wrapping around, holding tight. Hands joined, your eyes met as he came, triggering your orgasm, both your eyes shining sickly green and then flashing out. 

He began to kiss you again, still impossibly hard, still moving against you. The cycle beginning again. It went on over and over, three times, five, seven; sweat pouring out of you and weariness setting in, your muscles cramping and screaming but you were locked into this moment, couldn’t give up the slide of his skin against yours, the feel of him moving in you. Dean’s hips were stuttering, his knees shaking against the back of your legs, breathe barreling out like a freight train in time with his thrusts. The Impala grill was tattooed on your hips and thighs, you could feel the metal cutting you from the force of Dean and the endless repetition. 

Your twelfth orgasm was painful, it ripped thru you like a tornado, your scream cutting out of your already dry throat. Dean had lost the ability to speak it seemed, even the grunts he managed were harshened by his wrecked vocal cords. But the fire didn’t stop, didn’t lessen, the more you finished the more you wanted, the more you couldn’t stop.

A wash of cool air swept up your back as Sam ripped Dean from you. He fought to get back to you, face set in hard lines until Sam collared him with a necklace and spoke indecipherable words to him that made Dean shoot away from you so fast it made him trip over his own pants. Your knees were still to weak to do anything but grasp your hands emptily against the hood. Sam placed a similar necklace around your neck, whispering “in ainneoin do chroí”, to you- switching off the need like a light switch. You collapsed, sliding down the Impala until you were flat against the ground, cringing.

“Jesus”, you finally managed to eek out of a very dry mouth as you attempted to pull your clothes back into place. Sam was already on the move, explaining what had happened. The witch had cursed you, made you want things, act outside of will, burn for something that would kill you. He told you where to meet him when you collected yourself, told you that the game wasn’t finished, the witch was still alive. And that she was only partially a witch, she had to be at least half fae to bind the hex bags as she did. Dean cursed, saying something under his breath that sounded like, “Great, more fucking fairies.”

 

“What. The. Fuck.” Dean growled, eyes darting everywhere but you. You looked down, fingering the metal on the necklace Sam had put on you. 

St. Jude. The patron saint of lost causes. 

The realization made you sob, the broken sound loud in the silence, escaped before you could pull it back, rein it in. The overwhelming urge to crawl away, disappear, flowed thru you. If there was ever a worst-case scenario for how this could’ve happened, this was it. You felt like a thing. You felt dirty and confused and heartbroken.

Something precious had been taken from you, the insubstantial promise of maybe, the dream of soft sighs and willingness. The hope of love, a gentle touch, or at least an understanding- burned out against the hood of a muscle car like a bad prom ending.

Dean was still half undressed, hearing your whimper, he was staring at you like he’d never seen you before. You pushed it down and set yourself to the task at hand. Time enough to fall apart later. You stood up, brushing your bloody hands against your jeans- businesslike. You walked over to the passenger side of the Impala and waited on Dean to get with the program. 

Long seconds ticked by where he didn’t. Finally, you walked over to him briskly and shouted, “DEAN. MOVE.”, trying to snap him out of it.   
You grabbed his arm and he flinched. Flinched. Like you were some sort of STD. You snatched the keys out of his pocket under his disbelieving gaze and gave him one more chance. “Dean, we need to kill the fuck out of that goddamn witch and then get all of the drunk. If you don’t get in this fucking car, I’ll leave you to do all that and your ass can walk.”

This spurred him into action, he walked around and got in silently, not even arguing about you driving the Impala. You pulled up along Sam’s borrowed car, the entrance to the woods was choked with overhung branches and undergrowth. The crash thru the dense woods as you raced to the clearing Sam described was heart pounding, but it was a relief to have something to focus on that wasn’t the swirl of conflicting emotions inside you. Grief and disgust and want and shame battled for dominance. The look on Dean’s face after was seared into your soul, had opened up cracks in your heart. You were bleeding from wounds that only you could see.

“So, you’re offing people for cutting down your tree?” Sam asked, an edge to his voice. You and Dean entered the clearing, it felt old here, impossibly old. The wrongness of this part of the woods rippled along your skin like a tuning fork. You thought you heard music catching on the wind, reed pipes and indiscernible voices. The burned stump of the tree was lit from behind by the setting sun, casting a glow around it, haloing the witch who was surrounded by a salt line mixed with iron fillings. An iron axe was buried in what was left of the tree. Bronah was sallow, and shadows had sprung up around her eyes, the hollows of her collarbone. She stroked what was left of the tree like a headstone.

“This tree was my mother. She gave birth to me, and she was punished for it- walled up in that tree for daring to bear a half human child.” Her words were bitter, her gray tears streaked down her face like they were painted with ash. “One foot in each world but belonging to neither. And now you’ve come, my human cousins, no more mercy in you than the Fae. I’m an abomination to you as well. They took her from me, burned her in a fire for petty reasons, for free miracles. I can no longer hear her voice on the wind. I’ve served this town for generations, healing its sick, granting its mundane wishes. I only punished those who were too greedy, wanted things I wouldn’t give.” Her eyes were hard as flint, dead already. “This half-life is no life at all. Even when I gave you everything, you hated me for it.”

Sam softened, his natural empathy for the outsider showing thru. He didn’t lower his weapon, but he began to plaintively try to convince her that this wasn’t the way. “Vengeance is a circle, and its hollow. Everything comes back to you…”

Sam didn’t get very far- You put a cold iron bullet in her head and Dean double tapped her with a witch killing bullet just to be sure. You unloaded the rest of your clip into her, the rage burning up and out, your teeth set so hard it made your jaw ache. You’d been helpless, she’d ruined the best friendship you’d ever had, and she’d made you feel out of control. Control was sometimes the only thing you still had, and she’d taken it from you. 

And she didn’t die alone. 

She took a swath of victims with her, if Sam hadn’t gotten to you and Dean, you’d have burnt up like the rest, tearing at each other until there was nothing left. The town was almost empty now, this small hamlet burnt out in a half-fae girls righteous anger, the good and the bad alike had felt her wrath. There were only so many St. Jude necklaces to hand out, their iron mix and the blessing of the saint stood against the fae. There wasn’t much else that would. 

You burned her in the dying light on top of the tree -her mother- the air was pungent with the smell of rotting fruit. Your eyes met Dean’s through the flames, and they were dull with everything left unspoken. Things that would never be said now. Sam went through her house, taking some books before torching that as well, the house that dreams built. 

Later that night, more drunk than you’d ever been, you finally thought about what had happened. You and Dean were avoiding each other, no eye contact like POW’s. You didn’t like being manipulated, and one pregnancy scare was going to be enough for an entire life, but you’d be a liar if this hadn’t been something you’d been wanting for a long time. Wanted maybe, but never like this. The push pull of it was maddening, the want and the shame boiling against each other in a nasty brew. 

You walked outside, ignoring the twinges of pain you still had, to get some air; took drags of a cigarette that burned your lungs, god you’d had too many today but Fuck it. Sam followed you out, already bored but unwilling to leave you two alone just yet. He lingered in the shadow of the overhang of the porch, hovering but trying not to seem like it.

“What did you say to me? When you broke her hold on us, what did you say?” you queried, your voice shakier than you would’ve liked.

Sam hesitated, and repeated the phrase, “in ainneoin do chroí- its Irish. Or close enough to Irish. It means, in spite of your heart.”

You laughed, but it was bitter, without mirth. Sam knew. You took another pull from your cigarette, another draft from your drink- then shattering the bottle against the asphalt of the parking lot. “Nothing gold can stay, right Sam?” And you pushed past him into the smoky confines of the bar.

 

 

Both Shelter and Warning  
Chapter 2

 

You-

You may have lived, but not happily ever after.

This was not a happy ending. 

You didn’t know if happy endings existed outside of books. They certainly didn’t for people like you. Memories like bullets shredding your insides, wake up to another nightmare, a new fresh wound. 

Dean had gone back to fucking everything with two legs and a vagina. Blowing through them like he could unfuck you. Like if he stuck his dick in enough things he could purge it. Treated one-night stands like a confessional.

Was it a trade, a transubstantiation? Flesh into shame, memory into birds, whiskey into blood, hearts into both shelter and warning- touching everything that wasn’t you. Wounds that aren’t acknowledged can’t close. No matter how much you drank, you couldn’t forget the feel of him inside you, sliding home like he belonged there. Hating the weakness of wanting something. 

The hunt was over, Celtic witch dead- plus a few more. You’d been hoping to patch the broken wall between you and Dean, but he’d burned that bridge and lit out of town like hellhounds were after him. Both of you had eyes filled with regret, couldn’t reach past your own self loathing to touch the other. 

You cut a bloody swath through monsters for a while, taking every case you could find plus everything Jody dug up. An ocean of blood flowed from your reckless hands- an entire nest of vamps in Missouri, the werewolf pack in Montana, wendigo in North Dakota. Not nearly enough to balance the scales of fucked up you’d experienced. Like killing monsters would bring you back to yourself. Wishing feelings could die, but they’re as hard to kill as monsters. Harder even. The human condition didn’t just make your body more fragile. 

You ignored Sam’s calls for around a month. You couldn’t face him, couldn’t face being Dean adjacent. Not after he’d taken some tramp back to the no-tell motel hours after fucking you. You’d barely had the destroyed town in your rearview before he was picking up. You’d lain in your bed that night, alone in your single room, the painful memory of him inside you. You knew he was hooking up with someone else still smelling like you. You refused to cry, the tears you’d shed in his presence were damning enough. 

Were you jealous? Were you fucked up? This is the life you deserve repeated in your head like a mantra. Your hands had stayed sticky from blood you could never seem to wash out, your hair still stank of ash from that too sweet-smelling fire where you’d burned her, the witch who’d taught you wishes were dangerous things, weapons used against you.

Dean had worked himself under your skin like shards of glass, and then seemed surprised when it cut you. You kept drawing his hands- on the wheel of the Impala, cradling a gun- tracing over the lines you’d drawn like you could hold his hand. Like he’d still accept a gentle touch from you without recoiling. Like somehow, you’d earned the right to touch him. Like the line you crossed with him was chosen instead of forced. Tears burned hot behind your eyes, but you blinked them away, huffing like an addict.

Dean- 

Everything he’d lost had come back to him.

Everything but you.

Dean couldn’t stop thinking about the strangeness, the overwhelming fear that this wasn’t real. But your absence convinced him it was, never could have the sweet without the sour. 

They were back. Mom and Sam and everyone. Rescued from the other universe where Michael had burned down the world. Dean took an appreciative pull from his beer, but his hand was still shaking. Seeing Sam die, seeing that arterial spray gush from his neck in those tunnels, he had a feeling that the image would never leave him. It would settle into his heart like disease, haunting him through this life and the next.

Haunting him like the buried temple of you, the wrecked remains of the piece of him that belonged there. He’d burned that temple down. He’d done things to you, couldn’t kill that witch before she’d ruined you both. He’d kept himself busy, there was Mom to think of, Jack even, a new Bobby-that didn’t replace the old but eased the ache. The mission to rescue everyone, shut the rift had distracted him, and now that it was over the days stretched in front of him like a prison sentence. 

Couldn’t look at you now- but couldn’t forget the feel of you either. He’d dream about it, waking up sweaty and shameful remembering what it felt like to be inside you. Keeping a fifth by his bed to shut up the things that went through his head. Body betraying him, still wanting what it couldn’t have.

Did wishing for something make it true? Had all those things he’d never let himself admit he wanted leaked out? Did wishes damn you? He thought of those terrible Wishmaster movies you’d made him watch- evil genies, pretty close to djinn really. The insidiousness of wishing. Dean knew what kind of man he was-a good soldier was typically a conflicted man, and he was no exception. There was a hard-flinty place inside him capable of fucked up things. Dark things that normal guys didn’t even think about. 

The bunker was crowded, what was left of that other world was celebrating in this new one. He was surrounded by people, but he still felt alone. His hand kept finding Sam’s shoulder to make sure he was real. Kept looking for someone in the crowd he knew wasn’t there. He thought about that last confrontation with Michael, about their narrow escape home. About Michael’s last words to him. 

“You’re going to wish you never opened that door Dean. Wish that I’d never laid eyes on you. This world can’t hold me forever. You can’t keep me out forever. I’m inevitable- We are inevitable.” Michael spoke calmly around the archangels meant to hold him there, fighting Gabriel while lecturing Dean. Eyes covetously on Dean at every free moment. Gabriel only required half of his attention and Lucifer, as usual, was standing there uselessly. Lucifer found the me in team every time. 

“Whatever pal. You’re not riding around in my skin anytime soon. Free will’s a bitch ain’t it?”, Dean taunted, one foot in the rift already. His skin crawled with the proprietary looks he was getting from Michael, this must be what chicks feel like when creepers stare.

“I’m going to give you a choice here Dean. Let me in-now. I’ll forgive all your transgressions, I’ll go easy on your world, on the things you love. You belong to me, Dean. No use fighting it. Fate gets us all in the end.” Michael gave a grim smile as Gabriel flashed out, knowing that he’d only killed a double. As he laid what looked like Gabriel’s body down, he whispered to it- See you soon brother.

“Nah. I’m gonna close this door behind me and never think about you again.”, Dean was twisting back around, he needed to get through, the rift was starting to close. He grabbed at Sam, not connecting but translating urgency. Tried not to think about belonging. His chest already carried more than one heartbeat, and the weight of it was sometimes crushing.

“You’ll live to regret this Dean. I promise you that.” Michael had calmly stated to his back. Chills raced up Deans spine, the flat prophetic tone striking a chord of fear that seldom rang. 

And then he’d been home, watching Sam come through the rift last, full of relief that Lucifer wasn’t with him. 

You –  
When Sam called you to help with the overcrowding issue and the hunts that needed doing in the meantime, you were finally happy to help. The last month or so of radio silence between you and Dean hadn’t been kind to you, and from what you’d heard, they’d been busy. Hearing about their trip- about what was accomplished, well, it made you feel small again. Dean Winchester beat fate, Michael, the devil, traveled to realms you’d only heard rumors of rumors about. Survived it all. 

 

Sam told you-covertly- that you and Dean needed to work this out, now that their big goal had been accomplished, Dean was wallowing. Drowning himself in booze again like he could still get drunk enough to forget. Sam talked you into lending a hand, moving into the bunker ‘for now’. Said there was enough people to drown out the dissonance between you and Dean. That there was enough going on that it wouldn’t have to be an issue unless you wanted it to be. 

The bunker cleared out-eventually. You moved in, got organized, stayed busy, tried to stay sober. Dean stayed well out of your way. Kept seeing flashes of him leaving rooms when you entered, bits and pieces like a ghost. Only really seeing him at mealtime, his red rimmed eyes told the truth about what he’d been doing. Not that he ate, just drank his dinner in his room. You helped get everyone resettled, to stop looking for ways to solve their world’s problems. 

Sometimes broken things can’t be fixed. 

 

Now that it was just a few of you again-you wanted to reach out, throw Dean a lifeline, but you didn’t know if you were welcome anymore. Pissed you off sometimes that he shut you out, like you weren’t hurting too. The great Dean Winchester didn’t need your fucking help, he was the chosen one, bigger than life. But your feet were firmly rooted in earth, neither lofty nor hell-bound, and touching him felt like overreaching. You remembered when Dean died, years before, and no one would deal. ‘You can’t get gold for dirt, can’t trade rocks for diamonds’ they’d told you. But rocks make concrete and dirt fires hard, and if there’s one thing you do as well as Dean- its not giving up.

And you weren’t giving up now. You’d just have to shift…expectations. A small piece of Dean was better than nothing, after all. And owning this shit was going to be the only way you’d move past it. That was worth more than the romantic potential Dean did or didn’t have. You guys were gonna talk this shit out if it killed you. You crushed another unfinished drawing, even the marks you made weren’t cooperating with the imbalance in your life. 

Dean-  
They lived in the liminal spaces of the world, places where things had fallen through the cracks. Things that didn’t belong- bedtime stories and closet monsters. He and Sam would sometimes fall through too, not of the world but in the world, dancing on the periphery of life. But they kept the world spinning, tried to keep ordinary people out of the cracks, tried filling them in with blood. Filling in their own cracks with booze. It felt like every time they repaired one, two more would open up, gaping chasms- like the nibbling maw of an angry forgotten god. 

You were in the cracks now, lost to him, doors shutting all over the place. He’d been prepared to deal with your revulsion, with your edgy fear, pick you apart like an oyster to make it right-but you’d vanished. Only knew you were alive by the death that crested in your wake. Hearing about the overkill from Jody- hearing the concern in her voice on all you’d taken on- that made him worry. Not worry in a way that made him reach out- too obvious- but worry like you were burying yourself before you were dead. 

The thought made him shut Sam out, drink whiskey like it was oxygen, pretend like he was still hooking up with girls. Staying out all night so Sam would think he was. Only committing to another bottle, killing any conversation that came his way. He didn’t need roadhouse therapy. He needed to forget. He needed to crawl into a hole so deep you’d never see him again. Fuck that- he needed a time machine, needed to go back and man up before it all went to shit.

He wrote a thousand more letters, I’m sorry- I’m sorry- I’m sorry. Ripped them to shreds left wafting in diner parking lots. Snowing a whole collection of dismantled apologies. But sorry couldn’t take it back, couldn’t make you square. It was just a trite word for something he only half felt. Because all the sorry in the world didn’t make him regret it in his secret heart. His cross to bear- this secret of having you any way he could, the disgust with himself that he’d still enjoyed what you hadn’t chosen. He’d touch himself in the shower, half awake, before he realized he was thinking of you. A fifth of whiskey couldn’t kill the iron hardness that remembering brought on. 

He remembered touching his own flesh to the smell of you lingering on him at the hotel that night, the girl who wasn’t you snoring in the bathroom. Trying to fuck her instead of traumatizing you, because the truth was he hadn’t stopped wanting after Sam had collared him, after the spell was broken. Wanted to keep going, burn out like a star against your skin. Fast and bright and hot, they’d name a constellation after it- the lovers. Better than any death he’d ever imagined for himself.

He lied to himself about being able to touch her, this stranger with a vague resemblance to you. He’d been relieved when she’d passed out before anything could happen. Like he could forget the salt taste of your skin, the feel of your hair in his hands, the look in your eyes as you orgasmed around him-Dean wasn’t optimistic enough to think it was love on your face. He kept trying to draw it, capture the moment like you did but it felt wrong. Not feeling wrong enough about what happened sent him down a deeper spiral of guilt for not feeling guilty enough.

Not that he’d told you anything about that. Or Sam -when he got the bitch face in the morning as he’d walked- Stacy? Stephanie? -to her car. Old habits die hard, walls don’t crumble that easily when mortared with a lifetime of denial. 

When you came to stay at the bunker, he filled his time with cooking and everyone but you. Its not like you were going out of your way to seek him out. He tried to reconnect with his Mom, but that was getting complicated. Jack as per usual lived in an uncomfortable grey zone for him. And Sam, well Sam would guess what was eating him if he hadn’t already. Would tell him things he didn’t want to hear. So, he cooked, and he drank, he strategized and he drank, he reminisced and he drank. Saw everything through a more forgiving haze, took all the sharp edges off the world. There were entire minutes he didn’t think of you. 

It would get better, enough drink, enough women, enough just horror and life would wear this memory down. Put enough distance between him and the things he couldn’t have, and he’d tuck them neatly back into a box again. Seeing you wouldn’t be a punch in the junk anymore. It still fucking sucked, but he was trying to numb himself to it. Building up a tolerance for you. Thickening a scar over the raw places in his soul. Maybe time could heal any wound. Maybe a lifetime would be enough for this one.

Which is why Dean was surprised when you finally sought him out, he’d thought you were on the same page- like always. Typically, he’d have to pry the truth out of you, dig at you until you broke to get at whatever you were chewing on. Not that it had been an option this time. This time he was the problem. Making that problem worse by ignoring it, shoving it aside. Acting like you weren’t there. No supply trips to town together like you used to, not midnight movie marathons like when you stayed at the bunker before. He made you food you didn’t eat, even that small rejection had wounded him even though he knew he deserved it. Always walking out of whatever room you were in. 

Now you’re talking and it’s a broken hymn, a prayer that he’ll see you like he doesn’t already. Ripping off the new scars- cutting fresh wounds. It’s almost everything he wants, so close that its painful. Cheeseburger without the cheese. Godspeed without the god-as you liked to say.

You-  
You stomped your way into the garage, tracking Dean down had become a frustrating game for you. Mostly a game you lost. You paced awhile working it up, nervousness showing through the agitation in your walk. Dean just eyed you as you picked up random things on the tool bench and put them down, not really seeing them. When he started wiping the grease fom his hands, a signal that he was going to escape, you just started babbling, all your carefully prepared speeches going out the window. 

The rapid fire of words that came out were just as confusing to you as Dean. 

“You know…I…we have to talk about this shit…letting it fester away…just… don’t look at me like that ok?!”, eloquent, you thought. 

Dean-  
Dean stood outside the Impala, fidgeting. Looking for something under the hood that isn’t there, like his dignity. Squirming like a high school girl. What the Hell was wrong with him?

You were pacing just outside the garage now, and its driving him crazy, each lap in the loose gravel grates on his nerves like you were digging into his skin instead of the road. Like he was still raw. 

Could barely lift his head above the raised hood to look at you. Opened his mouth a few times, half formed thoughts being born and dying before they became sound. 

Finally settling on one. 

“How am I looking at you.” Dean coolly replied. 

You-

Oh, that Mr. Cool Guy attitude just ratcheted up your pissed off level. 

“Like I’m something you scraped off the bottom of your boot.”

“Now wait a goddamn minute- “-Dean launched up from his crouch, chin set like concrete for battle. He made his way around to the rear of the car before you interrupted him. 

“I think we should have sex!” You blurted out arms throwing themselves up like they were sick of your shit too. 

Dean froze at that, thumping back against the Impala while his mouth gaped open like a confused bass. The car rocked from the impact of his settling against it, laughing at him too

“I fucked this all up.” You whispered, abruptly turning around to look out over the unassuming landscape like it had answers, hand pressed to your forehead. The beating pain behind your eyes increased. The mad drained out of you- taking your courage with it. Couldn’t rip open the bandages around your heart without that protective coating of anger, and anger had no home here.

 

Deans hand landed on your shoulder, making you jump a little. “Look, we don’t...you don’t have to do this. We can just pretend that it never happened. Put it in the vault and bury it.”

“When has something in our lives ever stayed buried?” A hot tear leaked out despite you blinking them into oblivion. Your grandmother had told you once that happy tears weren’t bitter, and you ruefully realized that maybe you’d never know. You’d never had that kind.

“I need this Dean. Obviously, if you’re not into it, that’s fine. But if there’s any chance you could, I don’t know, be ok with it, I think this could help me-help us.”

‘How do you figure?” Dean asked levelly, still talking to your back.

“I didn’t get to choose. Neither did you.” There was a long pause there, fists tightening as anger swelled again, you methodically pushed it back down and exhaled slowly-controlled. Deans hand tightened around your shoulder in support- or maybe trepidation at was coming next. 

“I want to choose you, take something back that was taken from me. From both of us. Cut the puppet strings and admit I would’ve chose you anyway. That I’m choosing you, Dean.” You turned to look at him as you said the last bit, afraid to see what was written on his face, but the conviction you felt wouldn’t let you be a coward anymore. 

He looked shocked, grounded. He tried to cover it with humor- “Are you trying to give me the ‘We’re all broken and that’s how the light gets in’- crap?” 

“This doesn’t have to be something that haunts us anymore, if we decided to do it, then its ours. Ours in a way that- it doesn’t matter how it began.” You were throwing your best St. Crispin’s day speech here and Dean looked shell-shocked- and oddly vulnerable when his joke fell short. 

“Exorcise that ghost.” Dean agreed, he stared at the floor in concentration for a moment as he nodded his head. Almost like he was weighing the option of kissing you.

And then he was kissing you -like you were precious, hand hovering near your face like he was asking permission.

Dean-  
After your little speech, you’d been hooking up for months. No strings attached. The perfect set up. 

And Dean hated it. 

He tried not to, it was unattached drifter Christmas every day. He didn’t have to buy you drinks, pretend to be someone else. You never overstayed your welcome, there was no stunted promises to call. You never asked for anything else. 

Your friendship had gotten back on track, those long nights in the dark cementing something better than before. The ease was back, the jokes, that unspoken understanding- he always had your coffee creamer stocked and you always anticipated when he would run low on ammo. He knew if he reached out, your hand would be there. 

There were times in run down diners that his arm would snake up to rest behind you, the cracked vinyl seat scratching against his forearm, snatched back when he realized it. You were growing around him like ivy- no ivy destroyed. He was a stone thrown into your ocean. The awkwardness and the fear and all the doubt was being worn off him, lapped away by the tide. 

You never pushed for more and that held him back. That and a lifetime of death, of loss, of never. He watched you draw everything but him into the nooks of your life. You always drew him with Sam, two trees grown around each other with no room for you. He never knew how much he’d wanted to see you draw his face, just his face, trace it lovingly with a pencil, measure longing with a mark on paper. Only letting him in so far. Naked in bed, but never really naked. Never the kind of naked with clothes on. 

How did he know that he’d build another home, one they could never burn down again? Build something like hope inside you, so close and so far, he could leave a piece of himself inside and it would be safe. He’d carry it with him, as a secret, it would survive both of your deaths. It was too big not to. Like his love for Sam- the earth couldn’t bury it, Hell couldn’t burn it out, real -like the dreams in Heaven could never be. 

Love, so long a barren tree whose branches would sicken and die, bore fresh bowers again. Grew up into his soul, giving him a false sense of security. Dean should’ve remembered that nothing gold can stay, that everything you loved could be taken from you. He traced over the creases in your letters, kept with all his precious things in a cedar chest in his room. When he ghosted his fingers over them, he could feel you in the ink, that press of pen on paper leaving grooves-he could feel the shape of your thoughts in them. He missed writing them, the slick anticipation of waiting to receive one. 

A dying art to commemorate a dying way of life. 

 

 

 

 

The Road to Hell  
Chapter 3  
Lebanon, Kansas  
You-  
The sun is cruel.   
It keeps rising every day turning you back into a pumpkin. Keeps making you and Dean just friends again. Forces you back to yourself. Tighten the tourniquet on your heart, paste on a smile and act like it doesn’t matter.   
You sneak out again, head to the showers, wash away the night like you could wash away the feeling that came with it. Like you didn’t want to keep his smell on you. The intro chords of “Ramble On” began to dance with the curls of steam about halfway through, soap getting in your eyes from the furious rapid dash they just did at Dean stepping into your shower stall. You curve a wicked smile at him- well you hope it was wicked, you did still have to blink out soap-but he just starts kneading his fingers through your hair, working out the shampoo.   
This is new, you think, cautious. You try not to lean too much into his touch but it’s impossible. It’s not sexual, although there’s always that frisson of need around him, this is comfort. When he’s done he holds out the shampoo to you wordlessly and before you know it you’re carding it through his hair. He’s slightly bent over so you can reach and it’s so domestic it makes you sick. You almost want to say something sarcastic about it to ruin it- you like it that much.   
You want distance from it almost as much as you want to reach out and hold this moment to you- freeze it so you could have it forever. He washes your back, so you wash his. Neither of you speak, just get out when you’re done. He kisses you on the forehead then and walks off like he’s been doing it for years. Like it doesn’t shake you to your very foundations. You stand there, confused, afraid to be hopeful. Afraid to be anything.   
The day goes normally, but you feel like he looks at you more. Really looks at you. Sam stares at you both, watching you like birds roosting. You make plans, rehearse conversations in your head. Maybe today was the day. Maybe you’d talk to Dean, have the feelings talk you both avoided. Man, you hated those in general. You felt like a kid making themselves sick over asking someone to the prom.   
You were sitting down with Dean at the map table, having a beer- working up the courage, when the door to the bunker began to protest, warding lighting up all over the walls in a gruesome red. The pounding grew in frequency and depth until you wanted to cover your ears, Dean was already doubled over his hands clutching at his head like he could block it out. It hadn’t crippled you, you moved away from Dean to the foot of the stairs. Your gun was in pieces on your bed, a half-hearted attempt at cleaning it-at procrastinating, so you pulled your pocket knife out. The whine of angel magic, the shudder of it in the air made goosebumps rise on your arms. The door burst inward with light, the glow of it was blinding. Sam dashed into the room, gun already raised, his other arm up shielding against the light. Gunshots rang out, the noise in such a close room deafening. There was still so much light that you could only discern things from the shadows they cast, Dean and Sam’s afterimage flickering like an omen.   
Then someone grabbed you. Their hand like steel around your throat before you could even see again, you stabbed at them, cut at their hand. Trying to get them to release you, you finally gave up slashing and thrust the knife out, burying it into flesh and sticking there. More light escaped from that wound, you had to turn your head, even closing your eyes left spots burned into your vision. There were more gun shots, rapid fire from two different directions. If it had any effect on the angel, it didn’t show.  
The bright light starts to die down, you were beginning to be able to see again. Your light-strained eyes began to frantically take in the room- Dean and Sam were facing you, guns empty, faces grim. The man holding you up against the wall, just on the edge of crushing your windpipe, looked bored. His neat beard and quiet demeanor clashed with the pocket knife sticking out of his throat. He reached up and tore it out, the clang of it hitting the concrete echoed. You kept your neck muscles tight, knowing that you’d black out if you didn’t.  
You clawed at the hand until the man informed you, “If you don’t calm down, I’ll snap it. I don’t need you alive for this part.” There was too much uninterrupted eye contact between you too, he hadn’t even acknowledged the Winchesters yet, which told you that this was very, very bad.  
“Michael.” Dean spat, an unwelcome greeting.   
“What do you want?” Sam gritted out, already knowing the answer.   
“I want what’s mine, what was made for me when the world began,” Michael spoke easily, “And before you give me the whole ‘never”, Michaels head rolled to the side- finally looking at the brothers, cocked like he was conspiring, “Let me pitch you something instead. This…human, she’s important to you?”   
Dean adopted a casual pose, “She’s just a bystander, let her go. I didn’t say yes to our Michael, what makes you think I’d do it for ‘Bizzaro World’s Head Douche’?”  
Michael laughed, and the sound was chilling, “Oh Dean… I can smell you on her.” He leaned in, making your stomach churn, ran his nose along your neck. You could feel the fine intake of his breath along your skin, drawing in your scent. His grip never lessened, not even a fraction, that vise around your neck remained. He smelled like cold rain, a little metallic- like lightning was coming. The unforgiving hand of nature that would destroy you for no other reason than because it could.   
Dean looked at you, a long searching look -like parts of you were still holy. You tried shaking your head at him, but Michaels grip was too tight. You told him no with your eyes.   
Death wasn’t the end. There were worse things than dying.   
Dean-  
He tried to keep his eyes on Michael, but they kept straying back to you. He knew you were ready to die, knew you’d never ask this of him. And he couldn’t say yes, wouldn’t say yes, even for you. His brain had kicked into overdrive, trying to strategize-but he was in a shitty position. Something that didn’t leave him a bunch of options. And he’d never…well life is what happens where you are, not where you want to be.   
Wishes were for other people.   
He hardened his expression, shutting off anything that would bleed out from losing you. Shifted to an offensive position with Sam, taking the fight to Michael. He didn’t expect Michael to laugh. It was a harsh bark, the laugh of someone who knew a secret.   
“Sometimes Dean, its about timing…and leverage… I did warn you about regret Dean.” Michael coyly gestured to you, almost sporting a leer.   
“So just kill her then.” Sam huffed out with a frustrated breath.   
“That would be…redundant, I think. Something you’ve heard before. Torture too- didn’t work on your mother, doubt it would for your whore.” Michael grew introspective, his eyes went unfocused, looking past Dean and Sam .   
“If by torture you mean boring us to death, you’re doing a bang-up job.” Dean tried to adopt a casual tone, but his hands were sweaty. He absentmindedly wondered if Michael could smell it.  
“So, what then.” You managed to croak out around Michael’s fingers. Your hands were still wrapped around his, prying gently, not enough to piss him off.  
That long gaze swung to you fully, Michael standing up straighter like a doctor about to give you bad news. “I’ll destroy you. Raze everything that you are to the ground, salt the earth after.” He reached out a tucked a piece of hair behind your ear gently, his voice lowering to a lover’s tone, “I’ll rip apart your soul and scatter it across multiple universes. No Heaven. No Hell. No Empty. Just gone.”  
This shook Dean to the core, if your death wasn’t something he was sure he could survive, what would your annihilation do to him? No promise of someday. No coming back. No Memorex heaven where he could find you again. No hell he could dig you out of. Dean realized-maybe for the first time- that this is what other people had to go through. The not knowing. The Never. As bad as things had gotten with him and Sam, there was a continuity to it. Always another spin at the wheel. You never knew when the people you loved could come back to you. This was an experience of normal he didn’t want. This delineation between faith and knowing.   
Dean’s gun was still raised, a futile attempt at an offense. He took in your reddened features once more before lowering the weapon, giving up the symbol of control  
Sam spoke haltingly, “But you can’t-I mean wiping out a soul- only Amara could do that and she ate them….” Sam’s gun was still up, Dean could practically see the gears turning in his head, working out solutions.   
Dean’s brain lit up with a memory, one for the books. After you’d been whammied by that Celtic witch into almost banging each other to death. He’d been drinking and avoiding, same as you, trying to stuff all the bad shit into a manageable box again. You pitched sleeping together again, he thought you were crazy. He didn’t want to relive those rapey moments that made him feel like the worst kind of monster. You won him over, of course; told him you had wanted to choose him- that you were choosing him. That this didn’t have to be something that haunted either of you. The two of you could make it into something else.   
Well now he was choosing you.  
Dean’s gun dropped to the floor. Sam was talking, spit flying from his mouth, but Dean just heard noise. When Sam was flung across the room, held there against the wall, Dean spared him a glance but moved on.   
“Let’s make a deal.” Dean declared. He was snaking his way towards you and Michael.  
“And why would I do that?” Michael countered. Another inch closer for Dean.  
“Because you need me to have hope to get me to say yes. I need something more than your word. I need a contract. Written in flesh – “, Dean cocked his head to the side and added quickly, “– in grace.”   
Michael gave a devilish smirk, teeth too white like a shark. He was riveted to Dean, watched his every move like he was prey, dropping you like a stone-wiping his hands after- like you were dirty. You sucked in greedy drags of air, each burned its way down your damaged esophagus.   
“Write whatever contracts you like Dean,” Michael was indulgent, Dean was close enough to touch, and he was about to do more than that, “Because I'll write my name inside you so no one else can ever live there, I'll make your body a haunted house filled with locked doors, and you'll thank me for it.”   
“My body’s already haunted, Buddy. Terms?” Dean’s professional tone was clipped.   
“Dean-What The Hell!” Sam exclaimed, nostrils flaring. Being trapped up against the wall hadn’t helped his temperament.   
“Dean-fuck no!” You managed to grate out around destroyed tissue in your throat. You struggled to your feet, defiance sparking out of your eyes. You marched forward fists up when everything froze. Dean looked at you, fist halfway to Michael’s nose, then at Sam- spittle hanging in the air from the curses escaping his mouth.  
Michaels grin cracked even wider at Dean blinking in surprise. “I thought we could speak…in private.”   
Dean walked up to you- a real moment frozen in time, memorizing your fury. He reached up, his hand only disturbing the air before he brought it back down before turning away. He wondered if you could still hear, if you were trapped in the moment only able to listen, no outlet for that rage. He wondered if you’d ever forgive him for this, if Sam would forgive him. He wondered if you would understand, if you knew that he didn’t want to exist in a universe where you were a never. It’d be easier to cut out his heart with a spoon. He thought about the letter he’d never given you, this morning in the shower when he’d been so close- Still no cigar. He thought if he ever got to do this over, if reincarnation or whatever was a thing, he was gonna grab hold-hang on. Next time.   
Always next time for him.   
Dean squared up his shoulders again, shoring up his bravado, facing Michael with deadly intent. “You can’t touch her ever. Her and Sam are persona non grata to the angels. No one can destroy either of their souls-ever. No threatening them, no rapey business, no killing them just because you can. If you fight- no cheating or smiting or whatever, you can’t be implicit in their destruction either. And no angel condom for Sam. No torture, no fate crap. If you break your word, you get ejected. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. And I want a non-shitty heaven where we can be together when this is done. Anyone I want. Not your coma head bullshit.” Dean threw everything he could think of at Michael, trying to think like Crowley for once. Chess not checkers.   
“I’ll make sure they weather the ensuing Apocalypse well.” Michael replied, the words Dean needed from him were glowing on his arm, spiraling out to where he and Dean had clasped hands. Dean watched the promises wind up his arm, burning as they went with a perverse sort of satisfaction.   
Dean read through the words as they touched his skin, everything he asked for.   
“Do we have an accord?” Michael asked oddly formal now.  
“Yes.” Dean breathed.   
The blue light of Michaels grace lit up his blood as the words settled into his skin. Promises made flesh, winding their way in with Michael. Dean saw out of his own eyes alone for one blink, then he was cast back, like watching a tv. He tried to move closer to the screen, tried to flex his control but he was locked out. All he wanted was to get in the Impala and drive. Drive so far away from this, pretend like it wasn’t happening. Michael walked up to the mirror in the map room, talking to Dean who was now only a reflection.   
“Calm down Dean. You agreed to this.”  
Never said I’d go quietly. Dean asserted. Michael gritted his teeth, walking out towards the garage. Dean watched him get into the Impala with both revulsion and awe. Did Michael know what he was thinking? Why was he trying to drive? Dean could only skim the top of the angel’s thoughts, like trying to see sound.   
What about them? You can’t just leave them without a flux capacitor.  
“They’ll be fine. Time will start again when we’re gone.”  
What then?  
“Then I hope they enjoy each other’s company. It’s the only kind they’re going to have. I’ve warded the bunker- nothing in, nothing out. A trophy room.” Michael sounded victorious. Dean felt his face smile through a veil, alien and unnaturally wide and wondered what he had wrought here today. He felt Michael try to stuff him in a box, felt the edges of a lie fall around him-like he was somewhere else- and he fought his way through it.  
No dreaming for Dean. No peace. He’d scratch at Michael until he couldn’t take it anymore.   
The Impala screamed under Michaels control, tires slipping at the harsh turn he put it through. Dean winced, and Michael absentmindedly slowed. Hmmmm, Dean hid his thought from Michael, maybe we’d like a cheeseburger next- eh?

 

 

 

 

Tempus Fugit-  
Chapter 4  
Kansas 

Dean-

The problem with pretending to be God was that there was no one to pray to.   
No one to make the hours holy, no one to pronounce the sacred, define it by your sins. 

Michael made war, he didn’t make worlds, couldn’t build something new no matter what he thought. Dean understood, he was a weapon for his father too, was only a good son when he was useful. Always a mouthful of salt as a reward, everything bitter when there wasn’t anyone above you to acknowledge it.

But what came after that? 

When the plan was done, when everything written down was over. He bedeviled Michael with the thought of it. What was the point of taking your father’s path when your father was gone? What would he do when there was no more conquering, no more anything? 

Dean sat in his memory warehouse, built after reading Dreamcatcher in school (who knew how ironic it would become that it was his favorite Stephan King book). It looked like an old mechanics garage, even the boxes were a little dingy and oil tinged. The office door had a neatly printed Private sign hung on it, and it was Dean’s last refuge. One place Michael couldn’t get in. 

Michael-  
He watched you, and Sam, drifting through the bunker like you were ghosts already. Haunting it. 

There were times when you would half turn, like you knew he was there. 

He’d intended to stay away, sloughing off caring about what happened to you both, setting down that obligation like a bag of bricks. But watching you stare at the Impalas parking spot, the raw grief on your face, pleased and upset him. 

You-  
You were a monument now, a monument to everything you’d never have again. Peace purchased with loss. A weeping statue, cold marble dripping tears of blood, something they’d wrap up and hide in the Vatican. Something preserved for a select few, boxed up and hidden away.

You’d saw at your lip with your teeth. Taste the iron in your blood- make you real again. Bleed just to know you’re alive- like the song said.

Days turned into months, a stasis. Butterflies pinned under glass. 

Hope flaring up like a curse. You named your sorrows after every shitty town you’d been in. After everything you’d never said. You’d lived an extraordinary life, watched angels burn out, the world come to the cusp of the end only to keep on turning, watched nightmares crawl out of dreams.

You knew your end would come, you just didn’t think you’d go quietly. You thought about Dean and Sam, about the weight of destiny and roles and long roads never traveled. But what about the other people, people like you- when you were no one. When there was no great destiny- only a messy death in the dark. What did you do then? How did you push back against the forces in the world that would only move for lynchpins? You decided you would carve out your place at the table, wring the impossible out of the ordinary. That’s how you would survive when you weren’t chosen, when you had to make the best of what you had. Nothing god given, as if god gave anything worth keeping without expecting something terrible in return. Something so demanding it destroyed the giver. 

There was an Impala shaped black hole in the garage, you felt the gravity of its pull-you'd spent countless hours musing over it. Sitting in the garage looking at all the cars you couldn't drive out of here, a tease of escape. Dean must still be in there. Driving sometimes. The thought made you snicker. 

There was a time that the snicker wouldn't have been bitter.

Time was your problem now. Six months ago, Michael had gifted you with a benchwarmer seat to the apocalypse. You and Sam had raged at the impenetrable walls, fists bloody in prayer for release. You’d bargained and summoned and cajoled at anyone who was listening, but no one took the bait.   
If no man is an island, two could be adrift.   
There was always food, some trekkie trick where it kept auto-renewing. It had everything you’d ever need. 

Everything but Dean. And freedom.

Those first few weeks were filled with grief, days and nights blending together. The shock of it all catching up to the sorrow. You couldn’t draw, you couldn’t eat, everything had lost its appeal. If the people you loved were gone, are you alive-or do you just exist? Dean may be a monster now, but he still felt like yours. He was the home you could never go back to but had to live in, the stars at night that rise despite your grief. Walking around the bunker was torture, Dean had left so much of himself in this place. You kept thinking maybe in another universe you had a life that wasn’t steeped in darkness and whiskey. Maybe in that other place enough is just a word and it doesn’t apply to us. Its just a question we never thought to ask because we already know the answer. Maybe you loved Dean there, out in the open, in the light. Maybe there he let you. 

You tore through the archives with Sam, looking for a loophole, for a miracle that wasn’t angel based. Godspeed without the God. You started reading every book in the library, its not like you didn’t have the time. You discovered secret storage areas, more books, more tricks from the men of letters. No room lay untouched, no stone unturned. You knew all the bunkers secrets like your own. The chapter houses spread out through the US, the offshoots of the organization, maps and breadcrumbs to follow when you got out. And you were getting out, no matter what Sam thought.

In your idle time, and there was still too much of that no matter how much research you did, you drew Dean’s face over and over. Drew it until you could do it from memory, not from some picture you hoarded. You’d never draw it straight from life again. You knew the exact curve of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the elegance of his hands with their slightly knobby knuckles that had been broken and reset. You knew the set of his eyes, their moods. It was the first person you could draw a portrait of accurately without a source, the shape of Dean was inside you like breath. 

Michael-  
Michael looked around at the pitiful assemblage of angels, hardly a higher choir among them. These were the paper pushers and the bureaucrats, not the warriors- the soldiers he was looking for. He thought briefly of wiping them off the face of heaven, these unworthy remains of this world’s God. The thought of his Father both comforted and agitated, that long absence had made his presence grow bigger in his mind than any reality. No matter how far he came, he was still under its shadow. Still impossibly small, a cat hunting mice in the house of God. He still followed the mission- loosely. He was their God now, they would scream his name as they lay dying. It may be his father’s will, but Michael would take the glory. But this pretense, this mockery of peace with the current angels chafed him. He was their leader. They would obey. These problems with Heaven were troubling, keeping the lights on would take much more manpower allocated to Heaven then he had originally wanted. 

He sometimes wondered if this body felt weary from his obligations or Dean’s. He wanted, no he didn’t want things—Bullshit, Dean whispers. You want things same as I do. Human things. Didn’t we eat a cheeseburger in Poughkeepsie? Flew there just to have it?

Michael growled in frustration. His silence only made Dean laugh, and the sound of that laughter was maddening. He’d take it out on whatever humans he found, but that had stopped hurting Dean. He’d become numb to it. Dean’s capacity for horror was higher than Michael thought possible. 

Dean would just taunt him after- That make you feel like a big man does it? Hurting people that can’t fight back? The archangel Michael is just a fucking bully. One day someone’s gonna teach you a lesson you deserve.

But not you Dean- you’re mine. Name on the dotted line, contract signed and sealed. Maybe we’ll go visit our friends Dean, go visit your girl. I’m sure we could have a real good time. We could sneak in again, watch her without her seeing. Maybe we could touch this time too, if you’re good. I could touch her while you’re trapped inside, maybe hurt her a little too. 

You promised. Those promises lit up from beneath his skin, a painful reminder. Page 7 Paragraph C, Line 3. No rapey business. 

Thorough aren’t you Dean. But I could make her want it. Want me. That wouldn’t be breaking the rules.   
Dean was quiet then. Michael got some satisfaction out of that at least. 

 

Sam-  
He’d sit in Dean’s room for hours sometimes, it took months, but Sam finally broke the unspoken code of privacy they’d had in place for years. He couldn’t bear to look at the empty space where the Impala should sit, he avoided the garage at all costs. The missing guns were a surprise, why did an angel need a gun? Was the 1911 Dean cleaned once a week like a religion laying abandoned somewhere- tarnishing? Sam thought he could feel him here sometimes, like a ghost. 

Dean’s desk was loaded with pictures, so was the bedside table- him and Dean together in the Impala, a softer Mom with her arms around toddler Dean, Dad and Dean standing next to each other like soldiers. Each had a faint pattern of wear from Dean’s fingers, his tactile nature needing to connect thru touch, even with these. Sam always thought Dean didn’t have any secrets from him, he always thought he could read Dean like a familiar book. When Sam found the letters, he was surprised. Not at how Dean felt, he could see that in his face in unguarded moments. He knew they’d been sleeping together anyways. They were never as sneaky as they thought. But these letters they’d written, for years even, that was a surprise. Here he was, stuck with her in the bunker, and he’d had no idea their relationship had gone that far.

Handwritten letters.   
From Dean. 

It was so rom-com. And the more Sam thought about it, pretty in character for him.  
He wondered if Dean knew how she felt, could see the shape of it in her words like he could. Sam knew he was invading her privacy, reading something meant for Dean, things she’d written him-not Sam. Could he feel her hesitation on the page- where she was worried about oversharing, where it came to close to feelings? Had Dean made the drawings in the margins precious? Is that why they were so faded- from being handled too much- like Dean had wanted to feel even the marks she made? These were confessions for a dark room, for a funeral day, and here they were laid out on paper like they belonged to somebody else. 

She never came in here, never would cross the threshold into Dean’s room. Did the very smell of him keep her out- memories amplified by it? In all the time they’d been stuck here, there were things about her, about them both she still didn’t share. She never acted like she owned a piece of him like that, something bigger than the thin pie slice of friendship. When Sam raged at her, telling her she didn’t know what this loss was to him, that she hadn’t lost what he had, had her heart been bitter then? Had she hated him in the moment for the ability to love Dean in the open?

Then Sam found it, the letter that Dean wrote and never sent, the one that was waiting for the right time that would never come now. It was so worn from Dean worrying over it, it looked much older than it should have been, almost an heirloom. Would Dean want him to give it to her? Or was it better for both of them that this lay forgotten, buried in a drawer? 

That letter haunted Sam, his inaction haunted him, He’d run his fingers over it in the same pattern Dean had, almost putting holes in it. He could never commit to doing anything. That letter was as bad as Dean being gone. He wished he had never found it, never pried open the lid of Dean’s life like a jar of fireflies, once they’d escaped he could never collect them all again, couldn’t put them back like they were before. It was like a shitty Pandora’s box of knowledge. Of responsibility.

One Sam shirked, swept under the rug, pretending -like Dean- that nothing had happened. The other thing that he found were pictures of her, taken without her knowing, mostly her laughing. With her hair down. Bloody and victorious after a hunt. Dean must have taken them with a cell phone, gotten them printed somehow. They were hidden between other pictures, ones of Dean and Sam bookending them, keeping them safe. 

Then there were dozens of drawings, on napkins, crappy hotel stationary, candy wrappers. Drawings obviously attempted by Dean, wanting to speak your language. They were coming along, Sam could see the learning curve, saw your face emerge more clearly. They were tucked in with the absentminded drawings you left everywhere, birds on a branch on a scrap piece of paper, powerlines strung across burger wrappers. Dean must’ve picked them up wherever you left them, tucked them away.

He thought about the problem of time, how there was too much of it and not enough. How waiting, like they were doing now, could stretch it into infinity. How danger- fear- could make it short. People always think they have more, they waste it by saying the time isn’t right, and Sam guessed that could be true. But if you don’t ask, the answer’s always no, tomorrow sometimes isn’t as there for you as you thought it would be.

Sam wondered about Dean-crouched inside of Michael. If he was comforted with dreams of her, or if he was tortured with the almost and tomorrows that never came to be. Sam told Dean once- he didn’t get to feel like a hero for sacrificing himself, dying was dying and the survivor still had to live with that. Someone always has to live with that. Their death sits on you like a stone, it crushes you every day. He talked a big game, they were going to blast Michael from Dean, they were gonna save the world. But part of him was just done. 

But she wouldn’t let him be done, she was as bad as Dean, holding on, forcing him to get out of bed, to eat. She’d get this flinty unmovable look in her eyes, sometimes she’d roll his ass out of bed to prove a point. She’d always say the same thing, “This isn’t a world without pain Sam. That’s for other people, that’s what we make possible for other people. So get your ass out of bed so we can get back to work.”

You-  
Months passed, and Sam lost faith, he had his good days, but they were mostly bad. You didn’t know what about his life had made him think that everything was a quick fix, he didn’t have the patience after the first couple of weeks. Did the Winchesters ever have a case they couldn’t solve? Had they never developed the type of patience that could weather months, years even? 

He wavered back and forth on your ideas to tap into your soul, you’d rehashed the Henry Winchester point over and over until you both knew all the arguments that could be made. Sam had grimly come to understand that that was probably your best option. After everything, he just wasn’t fond of opening doors anymore, not that you could blame him. 

All the spells you tried made you sick, knocked you out. You’d be gone for days at a time. You started trying anything, any spell or incantation that might chip away at the walls Michael had built. Sam was just as fervent, carving furrows in his arms, always happy to bleed for the cause. It was a toss up who was more desperate, more reckless. The walls of the bunker were shrouded in the graffiti of unsuccessful spells. 

Sleep wasn’t something you did anymore, it was something that happened to you. You blamed the unending coffee. You gained weight, more than you could afford to. Sometimes there was nothing else to do other than eat food you didn’t want. Its not exactly like you were doing cardio. When Sam stopped trying to eat healthy, gave in to peanut butter and pancakes, you noticed- but what was the point of saying anything? 

Your heart was an ocean, you thought if you could hold it up to your ear you’d hear the echo of something that used to live there.

You were fluent in Enochian now, could speak it and write it like a native. You were learning their secrets, their symbols and vernacular. Their magic. You had several breakthroughs, able to reach inside yourself inches before you passed out. Touching your soul was like trying to lasso the sun. Each time was strange, and you came back tinged with the aftertaste of bitter memories that you couldn’t hold onto- forgetting a dream as you woke. Sam’s attempts were less fruitful than yours, maybe it was the damage to his soul, maybe souls were as unique to people as fingerprints. Sam could never harness his own power; entire rooms of the bunker were destroyed from him even trying. 

But it was never enough. Everything fell short, you could never summon enough power, you’d never stay conscious long enough to work the magic required. The pain was too great, the cost too high. Sam wanted you to stop trying, could see you burning yourself up with the effort. There was an entire section of wall outside your room that the tile was destroyed from your fists. Your knuckles were always bloody until the bones in your hand couldn’t shatter anymore. You’d hit the wall, the metaphorical one for once, and you knew it. Everything was just out of your reach, the power keeping you here was just too damn strong. The perfect cage, you and Sam had become a zoo exhibit for Michael. 

Then it occurred to you, an insane idea you had no business thinking in the first place. If this wasn’t the time for stupid ideas, what was? You started digging thru the storage areas, the long rooms of shelves that men long dead- did that include Dean? - had stacked. After a few days you stumbled on it, the box you had made from pine etched with symbols meant to hold it, contain it forever. You cracked open the lid and it was resting there like it was waiting for you, like it knew you’d come back after that first taste. The golden compass, the Latin on it beckoning- mutare fata- change your fate.

Some people could change their fate and live to a ripe old age. Some had disastrous results. Anything was better than being stuck in a bunker with a rapidly fading Sam while Dean was out there watching from the backseat as Michael ended the world. You opened the compass face and the needle was spinning until you asked it in your most polite voice- couldn’t hurt right? - Change my fate. The needle stopped immediately, and you followed the direction to a file cabinet and then further using it to dig into the contents. Buried in an unrelated file-incorrectly shelved, was some sort of Enochian focusing spell, something you could channel, something you could finally tweak to get out of the bunker. 

When you finally worked it, the pure pain and wrenching feeling gave you vertigo, tore you in half and put you back together simultaneously. It was like being the event horizon in a black hole. And then the memories slammed into you.

You remembered the spagettio stains on your Little Mermaid shirt from your brother ripping open the can when you were six, trying to tie your shoes in the back of a blue Cavalier, a needle breaking off in your brother’s foot when you were a baby. Snatches of your life buried in memory. The sawdust smell of your father's hair, those first scratches of pencil on paper when you found drawing, the rain on your face as you were born by the side of the road in a broken-down Trans Am. They rushed by you- too fast to hold on. 

Then there was Dean, that first look, the light hitting his face and reflecting off the glitter green of his eyes. The slow-motion roll of the Impala as he drove- only a few seconds that stretched out into infinity. Then nothing.

Sam-  
She was beautiful, a Tolkien terrible ‘All shall love me and despair’ kind of beauty, in the moment she broke thru the spell. The sheer blue light made her hard to look at, but from what he could see she looked calm. As far as moments, this was one for the books. He didn’t know if he hoped to see it again or never wanted to see it again. He wondered what she was seeing, what that unending gaze actually perceived right now. The thousand-yard stare had nothing on this. 

Sam wasn’t frightened of her until that moment. She’d gone beyond, somewhere he couldn’t go. She looked like a flare, something that bright could never last- like this would kill her. He remembered all the arguments they’d had, how it wasn’t worth her dying. He thought, fuck- does it suck to be right sometimes. 

He could feel the change in the air, feel the warding actually push back until it broke. Like standing in front of a Tesla coil. Her will had outlasted Michael’s. The bunker was just home again, the bars off the cage, blown off by a girl that was unassuming-barely average height. He picked her up, there were white streaks fading from her hair. She looked dead, but he could feel the erratic rhythm of her faint pulse under his hands, almost a vibration that arced from her to him. Like a hummingbird. Icarus flying too close to the sun. Sam laid her in the Chevelle, knowing she’d want to take that, she was attached to it as tightly as Dean was to the Impala. 

You-   
When you woke, you were slumped down in the back of the Chevelle and Sam was driving like Lucifer himself was on your ass. The sharp turns threw your head against the rear armrest, thumping loudly. You definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore. Sam’s eyes widened when you sat up, the movement lurching your stomach and causing your head to pound. You felt hungover, and kinda like you’d been hit by a truck. There was something bad here growing, eventually it would bear bitter poisonous fruit.

You reached up to the front, you hand forming around Sam’s shoulder as he reached back and grasped your hand too, the link between you closing as you met eyes in the rearview mirror. You’d made it out. The waiting, that awful waiting, was over. Those long endless nights in the bunker where Sam had buried his hope, where you’d revolved around each other like ghosts in stasis, mourning Dean; that was over. At least now you both could take action, see the sun again. 

You never told Sam about the compass, you just buried the box the first time he slept. You hoped it never saw the light of day again. You hoped that by locking it up, it would minimize the damage you had just wrought. That was the beginning of your secrets. The ones that would drive Sam away, put a wedge between you that would eventually stretch miles. You didn’t realize it then, but this new path you’d forged, you’d walk it without him. 

That first stop west of St. Louis was the hidden chapter of the men of letters branch. Buried in an old Freemason hall, false doors behind false doors led you to a suite of rooms where you found that your great-great grandfather had been a member. Well, for a short period. Your family had never been one to blindly follow rules. Seeing his name crossed out on a list gave you a queer sense of foreboding. When going through their pitiful collection of Enochian/angel intel, you found a small addendum describing how in ancient times witches and angels had worked miracles together. Blended their magic towards a common goal. The idea worked its way into your brain, the possibilities of blended magic, of joined forces brought together by one person was intriguing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Inch of Nothing for your Soul  
Chapter 5  
Texarkana

You- 

The whole world was going mad.

Some quietly- still showing up for work, dropping their kids off at school, even though nowhere was safe now. They clung to normal like it was God. Repeated half remembered prayers – World without end- Amen. Dusting off belief systems from childhood.

Some loudly- looting and lawless. The beginning of the end had brought out the worst in them- that howling madness that the veneer of polite society had thinly veiled. All they needed was the excuse. Mankind was a knife being forged in the fire of war, and what are blades but weapons? 

This new world was all sound. An embarrassment of riches for your ears- screams, prayers, and the leathery stretch of bloody wings. And then there was the lie of quiet, of soft murmuring voices, the lull of normalcy. Swings in playgrounds lazily rocking, forgetting what they were when there was no one to fill them. You could fight an angel in the morning and then fill up the tank, get lunch in the afternoon at the local diner. 

All blessings counted by the angels- using the devil’s arithmetic- names being checked off lists. The town you drive through Tuesday was gone by Thursday, burnt out or empty. The too real overexposure of film. It was sweat, mud, chaos, and calm. Horror and joy walked hand in hand and you never knew whether to smile or scream; you constantly had whiplash. How could you adjust to a new world when you could drive a few towns over and find Pleasantville?

You killed your first human in St. Louis, that maiden voyage from the bunker rancid with the bodies of most of your remaining family still fresh in your mind. Monsters weren't biological anymore, it didn't take fangs or witchcraft to be evil and while some people could still pretend, the infrastructure was crumbling. Humans weren't cleaning up their own messes anymore. Even though it was the right decision, even though he would've killed you, that first step into that particular breed of darkness snapped something in you. 

That was when you drew the first portrait of Dean, scrawled on the side of the Poplar Street bridge, an unforgiving fierceness in his direct gaze. Judging you with that sardonic twist of his mouth. 

Mankind had figured out pretty quickly that the angels weren't here to save us. They weren't the benevolent shepherds we'd learned about in Sunday school. There were mountains of burned out eyes- looking at the surface of the sun, they showed us horrors we were never meant to see. That real old-time religion was breaking free, bloody hands in the dirt, wailing on the wind- the banshees reawakened, rending clothes and singing rhymes of death. 

Half the world was carrying on like nothing was happening, going to work every day, opening diners and stores and offices like it was business as usual. They just didn't know what else to do. The other half was gearing up, honing sharp edges and using them against the angels.

Or against each other. 

Mankind was constantly fighting a war on multiple fronts: man against man, man against angel, man against monster. The fractures in the world made the monsters come out in force- no use in hiding anymore, humans were flickering out, and it was last call on everything. You and Sam had killed more in the last few months then you had in years, they were rolling up out of the ground like a plague of locusts. You were pretty sure you'd hunted vampires extinct on the North American continent, along with ghosts- the angels had rounded them up for fuel, souls powering their war machine. 

And Dean, the god of broken things, of humble loyalty and unspoken unbreakable vows. Dean was lost, in the wind. Riding a comet. The world kept spinning without him, nothing stopped for your broken heart. You couldn't even mourn him properly, there was no hunter’s funeral to honor him, no flames to erase his sins. Just an unfinished sentence in a life that would never end. This man who was everything and nothing to you, a hand in the dark, a smothered declaration, rushed moments in the Impala. Stolen. 

Looking at Sam was painful, the reverse image in a mirror, a tree without its roots. You couldn't get over looking for Dean, half turned in the Chevelle. Unfinished jokes on the tip of your tongue.

You and Sam had been out on the road, staying in the crappiest of motels at first, but mostly camping off deserted roads with plenty of tree cover. You'd never spent this much alone time together; all conversations were stilted and strange. It was all about the mission now. You became masters of half-finished sentences and lonely silences, talking no longer brought any comfort. It was always everyone in the wrong places at the wrong time. The Chevelle was all wrong, too short and too cramped, only the engine sang you a siren song of familiarity. You'd done so much research, combed the farthest flung places that weren't even on the last shot list. Days at a time passed without speaking, all the dead seen between us were loud enough. 

You filled sketch books with your hopes and painted murals of your dreams, angry aggressive lines forming your frustrations, the Braille of the words you wrote forming on the back of each page from the force of your pen. Notebooks piled up with cramped writing and symbols, lore books had pages torn out and glued in like they weren't precious. One day you’d have to start burning them, they were too dangerous to leave anywhere and there was only so much room. Even the thought of that small loss made you anxious, when piled on top of the mountain of misery -you found yourself unable to let go. The end of the world had given you OCD; you always thought-this may be the last cheeseburger I ever eat, the last cigarette, the last receipt, flower, anything. You started to keep everything, holding onto to it like it would self-perpetuate, like not throwing away a candy wrapper would ensure there was always candy. The sheer guilt of never feeling like you could appreciate it enough. The Chevelle started to look haggard, full of small bits of a dying way of life. Anthropology on the run. Sam tried to help, tried to get rid of things while you were sleeping, but that just made you paranoid- made you lash out. 

You and Sam were in Louisiana digging into some voodoo priestess, hoping and failing to find a new angle to come at the apocalypse with. You had to fly under the radar, angel radio was everywhere- it was Skynet, and the machines of heaven were winning. Michael was calling the faithful home.

All the times you heard your grandmother speak of the rapture-never thought you'd be alive to see it. People had started walking into the light a few months ago, vanishing into the welcoming arms of heaven. Best you could tell, they’d started hearing voices, hearing songs of glory, of peace. Then they'd started walking, following the pied Piper, like a man trying to find God, and eventually they'd vanish. All that was left at this point was a world of ok and not so ok people just trying to make the best of it.

Extremist religious groups had sprung up in the beginning; the end of the world and angels wiping out the population would hardly go unnoticed by the wackadoos that were already on the fringe. The Bible belt literally became their Promised Land and the screams of the dying was the music they danced to. Traveling through that area became dangerous, it was a game of pitfall with no do-overs.

Cities were fortifying their defenses, hunters and military had revolted against the master plan. And with Michael missing, they were holding their own. Angels weren't organized and the hunter network, along with you and Sam, had broadcasted banishing instructions over the television before that was gone. Confiscated swords were starting to be smelted into bullets and people were tattooing their children with warding. Seeing angels launched like comets had become commonplace in some areas. 

You and Sam needed supplies, decided it was worth the risk in Texarkana, an ‘in and out’ trip in a gas station that was still operational. You thought it would be safe.

You were wrong.  
Times like this made you curse that you hadn’t been born with the gift of premonition, or some other useful talent. 

Running the gas pump was exhausting; you were bone weary, head spacing from the magic practice and never sleeping right. Carving Enochian magic into your skin kept you up better than coffee and kicked your ass better than a wendigo hunt. It was all you could do to watch the clicking numbers on the pump rise in a fugue state. Sam had gone inside, gathering up what he could to keep you both in business. You hoped he bought their entire supply of jerky. By some miracle, money was still a thing, people still hadn’t realized it was worthless. 

People started to gather around you, setting the hair on the back of your neck to stand up. Goosebumps broke out all over your arms as you reached for the gun that wasn’t there. You’d left it in the Chevelle like an asshole. The worst part was that everyone was silent. You didn’t even understand what was happening, but a shit ton of people converging on you silently like the village of the damned was never a good thing.

When the crowd pressed in, you fought back until there were too many. That sea of bodies rolled over you- all grabbing hands that pulled you down, tore at your face. A well-placed kick to the head made you stay down, the fight over. Everything took on an unreal focus- 8mm film, but the sound didn’t match up and the picture kept missing frames. 

They zip tied your hands and drug you through town like a prize, riotously singing intelligible chants. There was a madness in the streets, even the air carried the flavor of it - bitter and sweaty. A throwback to the real old-time religion, a sacrifice, indulgences paid with fanaticism. 

The only thing keeping you awake was the pressure from the death grip the two men had on your arms, slightly under the armpit. Your own weight was an enemy- making them wooden. When they released you, you folded into yourself- still punch drunk, but planning.

When you tried to shake your head, to open your mouth to speak, one of the men reached down and redecorated your cheekbone with his fist, hissing, “Don’t speak you evil bitch. You’ve brought the wrath of heaven on our heads and now its time for your reckoning.”

Tied to a flagpole, a relic of a time past. They lashed you twenty-seven times before Sam could rush in like a hero and stop them, firing bullets like he had enough, like he had an armory instead of a suicide squad. Turns out the angels had released your faces, burned them into the remaining population like it would bring salvation, it was better than a wanted poster. This endless loop of you and Sam tinged with the angel’s righteous anger, a demand that rang in their heads, drove them mad. Heaven had a bounty on you both, and the reward was eternal peace. 

Kinda hard to argue with that

They whipped you hoping it would bring them the mercy the angels never had to give. 

Sam was talking to you -words running together like ink in the rain. That 8mm film of your consciousness was burning up now, overexposed and the light was bleaching everything out. In the receding crowd, you saw Dean's face, his body the only absolutely still thing amidst all the movement, a moment out of time that was dying with the light. 

You passed out then-film snapping on the reel, the scene speeding up nauseously before the white out- smell of your own blood and the rending of flesh too much. 

Sam had to bring you to a hospital, he drove for hours to get clear and ended up warding the entire place. The place was only half functional, angels had been in the area already and those who were left did the best that they could. He found a surgeon to treat you, you needed skin grafts at the very least, and it gave the doctor- fresh from burying his family, some purpose. 

Sam tried talking you into going back to the bunker after, it was the best place to heal. But you refused, tears tracking down-dirt bloodying into paste.

If that was the house that knowledge built, love had ruined it. 

It took months to fully heal- months of pulling scars so you wouldn't lose mobility, fresh pain building upon old- trapped in your own skin. That ripping feeling of skin that was too small for you, grafts put on by a doctor who’d already given up. He put a bullet in his head after the first week of your recovery. Months of Sam trying to talk you out of your plan, talk you out of trying something stupid. The key to the bunker hung around your neck. It burned, a secret shame, a temptation to give up- hide your broken body and wait out your death. 

You had more nightmares now. You couldn't get their eyes out of your head, that angry mob became a field of mad eyes dancing gleefully around you in the dark. Nothing would tear those looks from your inner landscape, that flash of Dean in the crowd, utterly impassive, it woke you regularly with screaming. No matter how many times you drew it, nothing would exorcise that vision. Those memories got so loud sometimes, they’d go off like sirens making you flinch-it's just all this noise until you forget the quiet. The quiet is scarier. The quiet, the waiting, the hiding. The terrible press of seconds as your skin draws tighter and your teeth grit together.

You woke up screaming again, the Chevelle rocking with your panic, your body protesting at the sudden movements that were always harder in the morning. Sam eyed you from the backseat, watchful. When he spoke, his tone let you know you wouldn’t like where this was going.

“This is going to kill you before the apocalypse is over. We've looked at every book, chased every lead. This road dead ends.” Sam was trying to be reasonable, hoping to appeal to the rational side he still thought you had. He unfolded himself into the front seat, impossibly limber in a way you would never be again without otherworldly help.

“Maybe for you”, you glibly returned, making room for him but not meeting his eyes. 

“Goddamnit!” Sam slammed his hand against the dash, the sunset setting his face aflame with color, lending a ferocious tint to his passionate speech. “We're the last ones left. The best we can do is save as many as we can for as long as we can. This is a pipe dream. We find Dean, Michael, whatever and we blast him. Like Alastair did with Castiel. That's our best shot.”

You huffed out a frustrated breath before staring at him deadpan, “Sam, there's no turning back now. Get with the program or get lost. Bury your head in the sand all you want. We find Michael and all he's gonna do is put us back in time out.”

Sam’s voice was rising now, losing that reasonable edge, “You think I don't know what you wanted that voodoo priestess for? You think this is what Dean would've wanted?”

“Well he should've thought about that before hitching his wagon to Michael’s. The world's ending Sam. And we signed its death warrant”, you lit a cigarette, which Sam hated, and got out to sit on the hood, ending the conversation. You traced Dean’s face into the dust on the hood, drawing it from memory, the lines still a little shaky from your hand still not fully cooperating. A distorted reflection.

The window was still rolled down and as Sam stretched out. He watched you draw on the hood for the millionth time and thought- but who's he gonna be without you, who am I if I let you do this- trade an inch of nothing for your soul.

This wouldn't be the last argument you had. In another 2 years Sam would be gone and you'd miss even those heated words. The devil said it would end in Detroit for him and it did. Only this time there wasn't a Detroit left afterwards. That broken city could never be taken. He went out saving people, a falling star burning out at it's very best. Full circle. 

Fate’s a funny thing, it sneaks up on you when you least expect it, sucker punches you when you're riding high. Sam had saved droves of people, but it was a band aid on the problem. Whoever he saved in March ended up dying in May, stuck on a hamster wheel. He was keeping the faith for Dean, kept the family business when there was no longer a family, hoping that the routine, the torch in the dark, would bring him back his brother. Sam had a quietness to him, a stealthy steady light that would flicker but never go out. You think- maybe I kept him sane in the long years without Dean; a stand in, a fun house mirror, where he could pretend that Dean was picking up breakfast or at a bar. 

Sam-  
He looked at her, this woman who had caused the tide to change in the undercurrents of Dean. One of the keepers of his memory. He knew she was dealing with this like Dean was dead, the cleansing power in Michael burning him out. But he couldn't give up, couldn't let her write the end of the story without her in it. Sam didn't even know if what she planned was going to work. When Dean came back he was gonna be pissed.

But Sam was just so tired of toeing the company line. Tired of all the apocalypses and the impossible choices and the loss that carved deeper canyons every time. They say that your joy can only fill you as deep as your sorrow has carved you, but his sorrow had carved holes in Sam, any joy running out like water. 

Her and Dean were the same kind of nocturnal animal, at their best in a fight, in the thick of it, always ready to bleed-to die for what they loved.

Loved but never declared. 

Rushing in-bloody knuckles, torn skin, the weight of bruises never registering- this is where they shined. But they couldn't reach out in the day, in the calm, grab hold- hang on. Only leaning when they were hurt- and only long enough to get to the car, drive away. It was like a bad country song filled with whiskey and regret. Stolen moments that they acted like didn't shatter them, reshaping their world one encounter at a time. 

Sam had all these grand plans before, confronting them, forcing a double date with Eileen, when he worked up the nerve, before his chance went up in smoke. All the great almost and nevers- hands reaching out but never touching had worn him down. It stopped him from forcing it. And now she carried all the words she'd never said, a stone around her neck. Did it make it easier, pretending? Did the wondering and chain smoking and unspoken thoughts make her crazy, did it drive her to this?

Maybe Chuck Palahniuk had it right, 'maybe you didn't go to hell for the things that you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish. '

Maybe you made your own hell.

Sam punched the bridge of his nose, eyes screwed shut, and smoothed over his hair. He wondered how many hells he had waiting. He wondered if there was one specifically for not giving her the letter he found in Deans things. That letter was printed on the inside of his eyelids, burned into his heart with Dean memory. It was Sam’s secret to carry now. Carry it for Dean who couldn’t carry it anymore. 

After everything they'd been thru, everything they survived, sacrificed, he couldn't believe they were back here. Never learning the right lessons. Sometimes the price of yes was too high, you couldn't touch heaven with your basement in hell. He thought about Amelia and Madison and Jess and all the right women who'd died for the wrong reasons and thought - was it all worth it?

 

Michael-  
He looked for her everywhere. The bunker was a dollhouse without any dolls, puppets that cut their strings. Feeling that string snap, well it fucked up the whole guitar of Michaels consciousness, according to Dean. 

Them escaping the bunker had halted the assault on Mecca. Stopped the rounding up of the holy. He’d fled the battle, left his brethren floundering without their general again. Raphael had not been pleased, the angels were tittering about the sheer vacancy of him, there always seemed to be an empty place where Michael was supposed to be and wasn’t. His plans were askew, Dean rising up, the sensory overload of this body, the sensation of emotion he tried to lock away. The sheer sentimentality of everything making him second guess every sentence of a story already written. 

Raphael stood beside him, a lean hungry look on his vessels face. That thirst for more had always burned in him, set forever as second fiddle.  
‘Younger brothers, man’- Dean sympathized.   
Raphael was livid at his absences, his distractions. He hated that Michael forbade him from destroying the girl at least, punish Dean for his insubordination. 

Their arguments about it numbered in the thousands, ending each time only by Michael pulling rank. Raphael would tell him that these promises he made were foolish concessions to a child, every time Michael heard Dean’s voice in his head he grimaced, unable to control even that. It was shameful, if Raphael knew Dean could still influence him, he would have crowed. Can’t control your own vessel.

Blocking Dean out completely took time, long minutes that bled into hours of concentration. It drained Michael and he only did it when absolutely necessary. When Dean was subdued, he dreamed. These dreams were torture for Michael, not having the benefit of sleep to wash away the want, to dull the sensations. These dreams would drive him mad.

Dean-  
Michael was a cold endless winter; how did you fight something like that? Something that vast. 

By being a dick.

Dean may not be able to make a fist, curl his own fingers into that first tool he was taught, but Michael couldn’t block Dean completely. Dean had lived with this body too long, grown roots into its skin. When he absentmindedly wished for a cheeseburger, or a beer, it would comply. It was too used to pleasing him to turn itself over to Michael completely. 

Dean had made his body a vault, a tool- a weapon, a killing floor. All of these things bound it to him. And while it was still built to house Michael, it now fit him like a badly tailored suit. He beat his fists against the walls of this fleshy prison, against the glass Michael had thrown up between them. Scratched, whispered, shouted and cajoled. He carried ammunition in his soul-the love, the fear, the hate all carved into bullets. Feelings you had to, not experience, but survive. 

Time out in his own noggin- no thanks. The memory spiderweb of heaven?

Hard Pass.

He may have let his father shape him into something useful, may have traded what he wanted for what was best, but one thing Dean had gained was perspective. He wasn’t just a tool, he wasn’t just a mission, he wasn’t just the magnetic force trying to fix a broken family. He’d been those things, and while he still did sacrifice, still lining up to die for Sam, he wasn’t just anything anymore. He no longer just molded himself to the shape around the people he loved. 

And he wasn’t taking this shit laying down. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Casts Long Shadows-   
Chapter 6  
New Orleans  
Sam-  
Twilight chased your exhaust, glorious color blooming up behind the Chevelle. Sam was half turned watching it, another kind of ending in his mind. That last burst of sunshine cast your face in shadow, caressed the scars peeking thru the tank top you wore.  
The smoke from your cigarette framed your face, curling around the inside of the Chevelle, making him cough. He hated you smoking in the car. He hated you smoking-period. He hated the way you sang classic rock like it would summon up Dean, hated the silence of your secrets- all the plans you made without him. He hated the nightmares that came every night, each sweaty inch you thrashed through- the sound of them making his dreams tempests too. And most of all he hated the avoidance of people, he understood to some extent that they had to be careful, you’d already paid in blood the price of ignorance, but he missed working with other people. Like calls to like after all.   
After you were whipped in Texarkana, after taking care of you for endless days and nights- he hated your want of independence, your almost sneer at his offers of help. That circle of I’m Fine that might as well have been I’m fucked up- but not enough to need you. It was driving him crazy, he could feel the restlessness of it- his knees were constantly up and down drumming a beat into the floorboards that drove you crazy.   
He picked at the relationship like a scab, hoping that when he finally tore it off it would heal instead of fester. Fuck, maybe it was festering already. The road to New Orleans seemed to never get shorter, it was a trip through Purgatory. You’d both had to lay low for the few months, the past year dragging out like the last week of school. The healing, the pain, the helplessness of your situation didn’t help anything.   
Those scars still rode your back like a conquering king, no healing magic or otherworldly help had taken them away. It had taken about a month for you to turn to magic, turn to cutting solutions into your skin that would ultimately be a Band-Aid. It turned Sam’s stomach to see that. He’d understood to some extent the necessity of it, but it still seemed like you were punishing yourself, that you enjoyed it too much.   
There were walls around you now, they grew higher every day. Higher than Dean’s. There was something impenetrable about your stare. Sam thought he’d still be able to read you like a book, but you were a piece of obsidian- something forged and opaque. Brittle and sharp. Giving him those goddamn Yoda answers when you gave any at all.   
Collapsing on yourself like a black hole. And as much as Sam was your friend, he could never carve you out of yourself like Dean had. You would just scribble in that sketchbook, adding lore to it, making indecipherable Indiana Jones maps to what you were thinking.   
The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. How dare you abandon him out here, mentally checking out, keeping your own council. Dean was his brother. He wanted to help, wanted to plan, wanted to do anything but keep lying to each other that everything was fine. You weren’t even friends anymore, you were co-workers in the same department, just hunting things together, never agreeing on how to.   
Sam felt like this was a separate punishment, this fissure in your relationship. Like he couldn’t hold onto anything that wasn’t family. That losing Dean meant he’d lose everything. What could he do when the bedrock of his life gave away? He’d watch your face tighten in pain looking at him, making him feel guilty for being alive when Dean wasn’t. He knew every time you looked at him you saw Dean. Saw that he didn’t deserve this, that he hadn’t earned this life.   
“Stop looking at me like that!”, Sam finally broke, his hands flying up defensively. He couldn’t take that face anymore, couldn’t take your silence and tears in the dark. “I know you wish it had been me, that Dean was here with you, but he’s not! I’m here! Scream at me, fall apart- anything! I can take it. I just can’t take this fucking stoicism anymore.”  
You-  
“What do you want me to say Sam?”, you replied coolly. You immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say, but it was already out there, not even the wind could take it back.   
“I want you to say something real. Something that’s not a platitude. But you can’t do that anymore, can you? There’s just a bullshit script there that you’re following, and you’ve already written me out of it.”, The red was creeping up Sam’s neck in agitation.   
“Better that than the nothing that you’re doing Sam,” you countered, “Are you just going to leave Dean in whatever hell you’ve left him in this time? Some brother you are.”

“That’s rich coming from you, a fucked-up shrine to Dean’s broken one-night stand record. You proud because he remembered your name in the morning?” Sam spit back, getting in your face, his eyes cold.  
“I’m not the one drawing the lines in the sand here Sam.” You were trying to repress your temper, but your hands had curled into fists.   
“Aren’t you? You act like you own him now, like you have a monopoly on this train wreck. Did you think this was gonna end any way but bloody? It always ends bad,” Sam said that last bit quietly, the pain in it made your anger scale back a bit, “Especially for us.” His voice started to swell with the next words, his arms slamming against the dash, “Does fucking him make you a goddamn martyr? He was my brother,” Sam paused taking a pained breath, “I not only understand, I feel about a million times worse than you. My actual last family member is gone.”  
“I may have put the man on a pedestal, I may be projecting my own feelings onto this, and everything I felt for Dean may have been one-sided. But at least I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get him back. All you’ve done is sit there and bitch about my methods.”   
“That’s the difference between me and you, the willingness to do anything, at least I’ve learned better. There’s some prices that are just too high, some compromises you should never make. They destroy the people around you, you fix one thing just to break everything else.” Sam was almost imploring you now, running his hands through his hair roughly.   
“How many times do you have to bury him before you figure out that love is an absolute? How many times did you leave him in the cold earth, leave him in the dark, leave him in Purgatory? Tell me Sam! You say I don’t have claim on him, you say I’m not family, but if your history is any indicator of what you think of family, well you can keep it.” Your voice had gone deadly cold, the time for shouting over. You gripped the steering wheel hard enough to whiten knuckles.   
The last few miles were deadly quiet, sealed up in a tomb- burying your friendship. When you hit New Orleans, Sam leapt out, slamming the door behind him like a funeral drum.  
You thought about all the things Sam had said, not just this argument, but all of them. You loved Sam. You were a ragtag family of a sorts- bonds grew deep in soils of loss, roots twisting together and sometimes strangling you. His words could cut you, and you felt like lately all you were doing was bleeding. When Sam had accused, “Dean didn’t break your heart, you broke yourself trying to hold onto him”, you felt a fissure open in your chest. 

The cracks in your heart could no longer be mortared with the memories of Dean’s face, the feel of his hands on your skin, the light in his eyes that maybe you imagined when he looked at you. Your heart was like Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead, it kept beating even though it was broken, was buried inside an angel. 

It didn't matter if he loved you, you loved him. And when you love somebody, you do right by them. You give them the best chance possible if that doesn't include you.

Michael-  
A year. He’d had a year of relative peace. No reports of Dean’s ragtag group, no setbacks in the war. Humans were still putting up a fight, but without Michael being distracted- without hope for Dean- the war machine had hummed along. Dean still pestered him, nothing could get rid of that, but Michael felt better, more in control. He only thought about them a few times a day now, didn’t track it in seconds anymore. 

He’d picked up their scent in Texarkana, the blood in the earth calling to him. He thought she was dead, or at least close to it. He waited, checking Heaven, razing Hell. But she was nowhere, still alive and on the board. To suffer like that and live, Michael felt something akin to pity. She must be underground, writhing in pain- effectively useless again. Like she was back in the Bunker. The thought made him smile- made Dean squirm. Out of sight-out of mind. 

Dean-   
Dean thought about all the times he’d died, all the times he’d been trapped-the never-ending forests of Purgatory, the red angry haze of his demon half, the unblinking light of the archangel walking around in his skin. He still loved you- but it was becoming abstract, he wondered if this last shift in being had made him something less, if he could still feel the same. That maybe that much death- of self, of body, of soul- would leave an echo. 

Like the stars, some of the light he saw was already burnt out, thousands of years of death- still seen like it was alive. The light but not the warmth. Michael fractured his ability to feel wholly, like light fractures through facets of cut glass. Harsh and geometric. Like the constellations were incomplete, stars dying in them- messing up the picture. 

Rowena-   
Rowena appreciated an independent woman. The wee lass is more than she looks. She thought. Tumbling Dean aside, she has a keen sense of survival.”  
You’d come looking for magic, could pay in luxuries. Fine whiskies and even chocolates. God how she’d missed the real thing. Things made in the real world had a flavor that conjuring couldn’t match. It was close, but never the same. The stink of grief was on you, could infect Rowena if she let it. She hardened herself to it, ignored the ache the Winchesters always brought with them. Those kinds of injuries never close, you just keep bleeding out from a wound you can’t see. And Rowena was done bleeding.  
For not the first time, Rowena thought to herself- Not much natural talent there. The will, definitely, but not the talent. She was a natural witch; you were a sweaty mess trying to move a pencil. Not graceful either. You already had a whiff of something other about you that Rowena could sense, playing with things you didn’t understand.   
New Orleans had become an unofficial witch gathering. The warding here was unmatched, but it was growing too large, would start to draw too much attention. Rowena would have to move on soon. But the luxuries, those were hard to give up. But as much as she loved silk sheets and room service- bespelled to bring her whatever she wanted, she enjoyed being alive more. Angels will notice this place soon. 

You-   
Rowena had started being trust worthier around the time the apocalypse hit again, but it was always nice to bring a bribe. Asking her to train you in the finer art of witchcraft to add to your arsenal was sound logic, but in practice was hard and thankless work. It was goddamn math in physical form. You hated math. This was like the kind that had letters in it. Letters in math. The guy who invented that had to be more evil than the monsters you hunted.   
You tried again to move the fucking pencil, tried reaching inside yourself like Rowena had explained to you. Explained like you were an idiot. You looked for that quiet place inside yourself, that calm- and it was harder now to find. The fierce part was there, the no emotion death dealer was there, but the quiet harmonious calm was ebbing. The chants were coming along, incantations came to you naturally, but that push inside wasn’t rising to the challenge. Rowena kept telling you that you couldn’t force it, that by trying you were just blocking it out.  
She taught you charms, hex bags, sigils and small tricks. There were few you mastered- a letter sending trick, a light bringing charm, but hex bags were completely useless when made by you. Cloaking spells were your specialty, the ones you made fooled even Rowena. If you wanted something hidden, by God it would be hidden.   
Sam was in New Orleans, avoiding you like you were dead already. You had seen his face, heard his arguments with Rowena through closed doors. He wanted her help- their help. All that power wasted on hiding he would say. Cooperation- Peace purchased by need. You scoffed at his attempts, by your time the witches decided to throw in their lot with humans the war would be over. Would be lost.   
But he still turned his nose up at you. You thought he’d come back, that this was just a bump in the road. You’d apologize- get back on the road. Back to the mission. But this is where the road ended for you both. Where Sam went his own way, your last argument burning up the interior of the Chevelle. When it was time for you to move on, Sam was nowhere to be found. He’d hitched his own ride out of there. You stood stupidly by the Chevelle as Rowena confirmed that he was gone, looking at the passenger seat like you could summon him with a charm.   
But witchcraft couldn’t undo the last year with Sam. Couldn’t unmake your mistakes. Couldn’t go back and tell him that you needed him, that the plans you left him out of were for his own safety, that the world needed a Winchester more than it needed you. You’d built a fortress inside yourself, but you hadn’t cut out any doors to let Sam in. He was the one thing left of Dean’s you clung to, you tried taking on that responsibility, tried to be Dean for Sam. But you never could. There was just this big space between you two named AD-After Dean. And you were tired of trying. Tired of feeling bad, of keeping secrets. Of planning things Sam didn’t like. The last words you said to him were, “One day I will do things for you and Dean, things that you hate, and that’s what it means to love someone.”  
Sam had replied, “You’ve already done things that I hate. And love isn’t a one-way ticket. It’s not a closed door. This isn’t love. Whatever you do, you do for you. Not me. Not Dean.”  
Guilt casts long shadows, and you were both done living there in the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burnt Offerings-  
Chapter 7  
Baltimore 

 

You-

Praying had become taboo.

You weren't even safe in your own mind anymore; insidious whispers caressed your thoughts, and someone was always listening in.  
Reaching out to the enemy in your weakest moment.   
But it was a hard habit to break. How could you stop that Hail Mary from going through your head when you knew you were going to die? 

Seattle was gone. San Francisco was gone. Wiped from the map by a surge of angels, an unholy fire in their eyes. Somehow, they’d erased entire cities off the earth. The aftermath had caused earthquakes, the reverberations of their combined will had shaken down the entire state. Most of California had fallen, chess pieces toppling over. Michael made war like a master composer, and we were nearing the crescendo. You could hear the rising bars in the screams of the dying, the pauses in the empty cities, and see the notes laid out as you watched America fall into ruins.

There was no pretending anymore, the power grid was down, there were no hospitals, and even car travel was difficult. The roads were blocked, it was hard to hide the sound of a car. A traveling target for angels and humans alike. 

The Chevelle was abandoned, gas was hard to come by and you had to fly lower on the radar than most. It had broken your heart all over again to leave it. This last link between you and your father, one of the few tangible things you had left that Dean had touched. The last ride you'd taken with Sam before he'd left. A banquet of endings made from steel. You carved your life into it, knowing you’d never see it again. All the faces of love in this life- drawn with a knife, every kindness remembered-etched into the surface of the last thing you loved. 

The old Gods had risen up, made us remember why we were afraid of the dark. They made everything worse in the ways that Gods do, they couldn't help it- built like natural disasters as they were. Their time came and went again, full circle. They flooded the world making promises they couldn't keep- they couldn't save the world if they couldn't save themselves.

You'd swayed a few of them to your cause, summoning them with the bits and pieces that you’d found in the satellite Men of Letters sites. You fed them revenge like bread and water, knowing they would burn like Roman candles before they went out.   
It got you close enough to Raphael, got you an opportunity to summon him with a siren song. You'd always been hungry for knowledge, but now you were ravenous- enough Enochian, blended with witchcraft, voodoo, and blessings from the old God's built with burnt offerings-a tapestry woven together with your will. 

Strange bedfellows and compromises and all the things you said you'd never do. Wiped clean by necessity and time, changing the sheets in the bed of your soul. You'd learned to tap into your soul years ago, inch by sweaty inch, started layering magic not long after. The pain never really went away, those wrenching moments you reached inside yourself and tore out an organ, you just got used to it. Learned to make yourself a bomb. 

Raphael didn't disappoint, the song your blood sang when painted with his sigils was too much to resist. He emerged from the darkness like a nightmare come to life. He studied you like he was looking at your atoms, could weigh you by the sum of your parts.

Raphael-  
He looked at her, this inferior being that had called him here, this obsession of Michael’s. She’d poisoned him, made him less his brother and more like the vessel he wore. The insult of that was enough to make him want to wipe her off the map, burn out her soul like a crushed cigarette. But he had promises to keep- according to Michael he could fight her- kill her even; just couldn’t erase her. But he had time before he told Michael, plenty of time to make her wish he could. Remind her of her place in the world. 

This world used to have real old-time religion. When angels called, the humans were filled with awe, happy to serve their betters, happy to buy into the cause. They were all soldiers, this was all one war. And soldiers needed to get in line. 

“Did you think you could rewrite this story? You were barely in it to begin with. Out of all the humans, there have been many lynchpins. You weren’t even a side note.” 

He was calm, joyous even. Here she was serving herself up on a platter. This was the agent of chaos, this insignificant ant? This was the woman angels whispered about? He was unimpressed. He felt the warding pulse around him, her feeble attempt at containment.

You-  
“Well this red shirt is about to kick your ass.” You spun your angel sword into a defensive position, wishing you had two. Thinking that maybe after today you would.

Raphael lifted his arms -curling the hands up into fists, his eyes blew out- that impossible light spilling. That grinding shattering noise that accompanied their power echoing through the room- burning out all the sigils you had carefully crafted. His face was painted with victory. 

“You were saying?” Raphael mocked, “This is a pointless fight, one day death will visit you and you’ll come with us anyway.”

You kept the victory off your face, you had anticipated this. He’d burned a considerable amount of energy blasting those sigils, there had been so many variations. You wore the mask of defeat well, the grim set to your mouth, the flatness in your eyes. You couldn’t hide the fact that the sound of angel power, of their voice, didn’t cripple you-something had happened to you a long time ago that enabled you to tune it out. That partial deafness you’d always cursed had turned out to be useful. He’d missed the most important sigil, the draining one cut into the flesh of your leg and the unfinished one on your forearm you were saving for later. The one on your leg was a concoction of several magicks, was insidiously siphoning off his grace in a slow trickle that grew-, funneling it into you. 

You let him come to you, let him stalk you like prey, eyes going wary and letting some of your fear bleed out, blood in the water for sharks. That first strike was still staggering, it pushed you back, made your arms quiver with effort, the shock of the blow ringing up your nerve endings.

You danced the oldest choreography, this test of swords and speed that had been done for thousands of years before. Raphael was Michael's lieutenant, he led the war, and this was your chance to break the front line. Time slowed down, you were moving faster than any human should, Raphael’s eyes were comically wide at your hummingbird steps. 

Even with the combined power of God and man flowing through you, you were no match for an archangel. Cuts opened up on your face, your arm, your back. Raphael was playing with you. You waited for your moment- reaching up and cutting the symbol on your arm, sneakily dragging your forearm across the blade, finishing the design. Smeared the blood that was already dripping. You weren’t sure if it was going to work, it was still a theory -this mid battle sigil detonation. 

Raphael was blasted back, light draining from his eyes, he fought the compulsion -angel batteries already recharging. But it was too late, your angel blade was already on an immutable path. Instead of trying to stop it, knowing it was useless, Raphael lashed out, his blade raking a bloody path through your leg, the white of bone shone through. As he flashed out he laughed incredulously. Your leg gave out, you looked dumbly at the canyon carved through your jeans, already a macabre red. Shock, you were in shock, hands trembling, afraid of the pain you knew was coming. 

“You always were a vindictive son of a bitch”, you accusingly threw at Raphael’s corpse. You took his blade- sometimes the spoils of war weren’t bitter, they were sweet.  
Black started to creep in, the scene distorting -both too real and dreamlike simultaneously, sweat pebbled your entire body. This was it, the final act, curtains closing. Michael would find you here, let you die, and you'd wake up in a new prison- one you couldn't escape. You clutched Raphael’s sword to your chest. You’d earned this trophy-you’d take it with you to your grave. Raphael had hunted down your family after you escaped the bunker, erased them one by one in the bloodiest way possible. 

This hadn’t just been about the war. This was personal. 

Stomach clenching, you laid yourself down, willing the meager contents of your last meal in before everything went black.

Someone was dragging you out; you'd passed out from shock, from too much magic that even now made your blood feel carbonated. The pain did make you throw up, barely registering that it was happening. Just the drag of the floor, each wood plank was new agony as your leg jostled across.

The entire Eastern seaboard had gone into upheaval at Raphael’s death, the angels that were left had abandoned their posts after feeling the loss of their brother, their superior. It wasn’t long before Michael came to inspect the situation. Lighting was striking randomly -nature abhorring a vacuum.   
Maybe this was Michael, maybe he’d make an example of you before it was over.

Michael-  
There were angel wings seared into dozens of surfaces in the harbor, a funeral pyre already, an entire Garrison seared off the face of the Earth. The meek weren't inheriting the earth, but they were getting a hell of a lot harder to exterminate.

Dean's satisfaction was emanating from him, setting Michael's teeth on edge. 

Should have a beer, this is a celebratory beer moment. 

And dammed if that didn't make him want one, Michael's mouth dried up, Sahara like.

Fallen idols’ and lost Gods’ blood- the last of its kind- ran in the streets, coaxing strange vegetation to spring up in its wake; bringing useless miracles that no one was left to wonder at. The earth would never see such a battle again. Her maestro stroke and he'd missed it. He didn't just miss the battle, he felt like he was missing the war.  
The city lay heavy with the shifting tide of loss, the hangover of magic and power and death on a cosmic scale. She'd waged a decisive strike here, a misdirection to get at the head of the snake. It was like walking into the punchline of a bad joke with the bodies as punctuation. One could hear the veins of the universe straining under the weight of change.  
The warm smell of her, along with the burnt electric stench of magic, permeated the room along with the rancid penny smell of blood. 

-Whoa, girl got badass, how much of that blood is hers- Michael cut Dean off. 

Her body wasn't here, no trophy for his wall, nothing to make this worth it. Everything in this city carried her footprint, down to the cigarette stubs he'd found littering the lynch pin points.

Michael gritted his teeth in frustration, not for the first time, that the apocalypse was taking this long, that these setbacks even happened. He'd sent the angels away, so he could survey the scene alone, their lackluster efforts were just pissing him off. The eyes of Raphael's vessel were open staring at nothing, a jester’s grin still on his face. 

Who got the last laugh fucker-Dean sneered.

Raphael was gone, there would be no resurrection here today. It had severely demoralized the troops. Raphael had been what held them together when Michael had been fighting his own war inside himself. Raphael had kept the faith and the flock. He towed the company line- a seat at every table, a chicken in every pot. A crest of anger, of frustrations washed over Michael.

He was going to conquer this universe, every universe and destroy her in every one. 

-You PROMISED- Dean reverberated

The burn of those promises stung even now, glowing up underneath his skin, shackles around his wrists. He'd obliterate her, so the rain no longer reminded him of her eyes

\- whoa buddy that was intimate-.

Fuck the rain too. 

-might be kinda hard-

He began tearing up the walls, trusses and studs coming apart like paper, ripping out the shear wall causing the building to collapse. When he stood in the wreckage, not even a little sated, nostrils flaring as he drug in what was supposed to be a steadying breath, he peered across the settling dust and the forlorn timbers of the ruined building and saw something new, something that hadn't been there when he walked in hours ago. The Sagamore Pendry Hotel had a mural painted on the wall, bricks holding into the wet paint like an embrace. It was life size, a portrait of Dean again. He almost lost interest -wait…- before he recognized himself in the stance, caught the glimpse of wings in the background. He walked up to it and there was no mistaking it, this wasn't Dean. Dean's body maybe, but Michael's eyes- 

-mine were never that cold- 

Keep telling yourself that Dean. 

The longer he looked at the portrait, the angrier he got, the white-hot lash of it even silenced Dean. She was fucking mocking him. Killed his lieutenant, devastated his numbers and then sneaks back in and draws this? If he had looked out the window he would have seen her. Those eyes reminded him of his father, all that remote expectation of duty. He looked small, as if Dean defined him and not the other way around. He was hurling it into the ocean before he knew what he was doing, the brick crumbling under his unforgiving grip.  
But destroying it didn’t make it go away, it was burned into the backs of his eyes like a negative. Even his reflection in the water was tarnished by that portrait. Michael knew that he would see himself like that from now on, like a scar he couldn’t remove.

You-  
Dean wiped the blood smeared hair back from your face, his eyes were flickering back and forth over you- inspecting the damage. When he ascertained that you'd live, he swept you up with a whoop and crushed you to his chest. Even with the air forcefully removed from your lungs and your head aching you felt this light inside you at his happy laughter- slightly maniacal with suppressed worry. He whirled you about making your stomach churn. The vertigo snapped you back, the pain riding shotgun.

It was the dream again. 

The only Dean that was left was in your dreams, made real again in paint scrawled on the sides of hundreds of buildings

You hauled yourself up into a sitting position- the ruined warehouse you were not dying in was a welcome sight, as was Gabriel.  
You were heaving and out of breath, the house paint you had used was in your hair, coated your arms to the elbow. The pain in your leg was inching through the spells you'd used to keep going, you started trying to messily sew it up while you still had the nerves deadened. Gabriel had gotten you out, despite your bitterness at not being able to see Michael's face. But he couldn't(wouldn’t?) heal you, said he was far too spent for that after whisking you out like Mary Poppins. This war had taken its toll on him as well. Those world-weary eyes almost looked past the dawn, one foot in the afterlife already. He'd thought you a fool when you'd gone back after, painting the wall for Michael to see.

Gabriel began, "Girl you got more balls than sense, but I like your style." He'd joked watching you carve new magic into your skin.

Better than painkillers.

Gabriel started again, serious now, “One day you're gonna have to go Mano-e-Mano chickadee. The game won't last forever."

You looked up at him, eyes feverish bright, "I know. But for now, I'm gonna introduce him to mankind's finest emotions- like pettiness."

Gabriel laughed, rich with appreciation, "You did a big thing today. Ended an archangel. Things will be worse now."

"They were never gonna get better", you returned, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Gabriel knelt down to your level, matching his gaze to yours, “I know. But you're making it personal. One day the Piper will have to be paid."

"You don't think we can win this war?" You tried to be cheeky and just sounded forlorn.

"No, sugarplum. And neither do you." Gabriel took your chin in his hand, thumbing at the shallow dimple there before letting you go. 

We were silent then. He knew you still had to try, even if you were going thru the motions. You had to do this for Dean, for Sam. 

That's why memory was lonely, you had to carry it by yourself.

You missed the open sky and the facelessness of before, it was all hats and holes and hoods and sewers and all the other places no one else wanted to go. You were a place no one wanted to go, a place where no one stayed. Even Gabriel, you could hear his excuses moments before he made them, knew he would never stay. You were radioactive, Chernobyl. He left before dawn hit and you were alone again. Chain smoking, light filtering in around the smoke curling up around you like a curse. Could always count on Gabriel for the creature comforts. It was like a one-night stand without the sex.

You thought about all the nights you hadn’t slept, how this life had burned out everything but a sense of purpose, and after a while it took that too- took the urgency of it, the vital drumming heart of a cause. Everything had been boiled down, emotions discarded like weapons when empty. You didn't know how to live now without a sword in your hand. That's all your hands were good for, the only shape they would still make. You thought about that girl who had cried in the bunker alone, the one who loved Dean to ruins.

That girl was gone.

 

 

 

Putting out the Stars  
Chapter 8  
The Fall of Tampa  
You-  
We got this.  
Famous last words.   
Everything burned.   
The world was nothing, but heat, molten metal, and dreams made ash. The sun may burn time-like Fahrenheit 451 claimed, but without any change to measure it- time became meaningless. You wondered of this was what Hell was like- a burning fire that would never end. Alone while the world blackened around you, pain screaming through your nerves. Not knowing where your family was, where your friends were. Not knowing if help was coming.   
Fearing help would never come again.  
You thought about Dean, like you always did in bad moments-hallowed be thy name. How the curve of his face could take shape under your hand, even now when you were blind. How the edge of his stubble felt grazing your cheek. Pretended it was his hand you were holding onto here at the end of the world.   
Your arm screamed at you, the skin falling off already, trying to hang onto the scant sweaty inches of steel, holding yourself up to stay protected from the blast. But the metal was heating, burning what was left of your fingertips. There was still so much light, you’d kept your eyes screwed shut against it, but even your eyelids were tired. You were afraid that even the amount of light streaming through them might blind you.  
At the point you thought you’d collapse, the light began to die down. The echo of it was still there, spots the size of semi-trailers were clouding your vision. Something inside of you clicked at the silence, that awful drumming noise finally over, and you knew it was safe to drop down. You hit the incline of the underpass-hard. Still blind you scrambled to make sense of the world through touch, to do the least amount of damage to your body.   
You finally came to rest on the cooling asphalt, still hot enough to scorch already heat damaged nerves. The crack and sizzle of it was unnerving, too loud with your hearing amplified because you couldn’t see. You still had your pack strapped to your back, you slowly slid it down and traced the zipper track down to the pull. Your canteen of water was immediately divided in half -drinking and quenching the serious burns you’d received. Your rapid blinking was starting to bring back enough of your vision to handle that.   
There had been an awful hollow drum noise, somewhat faint, and it had made the hair on your arms stand up. At about the third beat, the perimeter sigils had lit up like Christmas, it was too late to avoid the melting magic from searing your painting arm. You’d immediately scraped mud onto it, hoping that it would counteract. The unsettling drumming sound had increased, the beats were almost one beat they came so often. It had made the hair on your undamaged arm stand up. Without thinking you had climbed the incline to the structure of the underpass, spidering into the I-beams.  
Michael-  
He knew you were here.  
He could feel it, whether it was Deans innate sense or focused angel power, that was a toss-up. Tampa was falling around him, they’d almost perfected the timing, the sigils. Next time it would be more efficient. Clean.   
It helped that he knew that you were going to make a move here, that they’d tricked the humans into thinking there was going to be a huge POW camp left unwatched in favor of thwarting the attack. There was a camp, but no one there would be rescued. Not more than they had been already. More fuel for Michael. More souls to burn.  
He was close to being able to bridge the two heavens. His worlds and this one. Combine their power. Become God. Harness the abandoned throne and seek out his brothers. Punish them like he’d been punished. Michael was a wrathful God after all.   
Eventually he’d move on again, always a new world to conquer, a new Heaven to build. He’d keep going until he found his father. Carry that torch into all the dark places without Him. How proud would He be? Michael had followed the plan until there was no more plan. Brought the plan everywhere, carried his father’s will into each new universe.   
He’d see God again. As equals.   
Bwahahahahaha still trying to be your Dad, huh buddy? Haven’t learned that lesson yet?  
Bet he wouldn’t appreciate that.   
Michael ignored Dean. He was so close to having you again, the girl that made Dean brave, made him carry on. He filtered through Dean’s ‘greatest hits’ box, watching his memories like a movie. Snatches of you in the dark, you up against the hood of the Impala, a million hunts where your hair wasn’t bundled underneath that hideous hat. He growled, and it was almost proprietary, Dean flinching at the sexual undercurrent that Michael may not fully grasp but Dean did.   
Michael wanted you back in your box. Wanted you to stop chipping away at him like he was a twig instead of an iceberg. Wanted to erase everything you ever had so you had no choice but to go back. Burn everything you love like it would exorcise this pit, this hollowness you made ring out from Dean. 

You-  
You were lucky. You survived. Tampa did not.  
As if luck were measured by survival anymore. At this point it was more of a curse. Not that there was a better alternative. You heard things, things about the new heaven. That they twisted your memories into nightmares. That the refurbished Heaven more closely resembled Hell. You paid for every second of this life with pain. The afterlife would be no different. On earth as it is in Heaven.

And that wasn’t even scraping the surface of the things Michael would do to you. Your locked door, the last, the thoughts of the horrors Michael had the better part of a decade to dream up. Even thinking about the edges of those thoughts made you shiver. There were worse things than death and your bar for that kept getting higher.  
After doing what first aid you could and chasing some painkillers with some rationed vodka, you finally took the time to stand back up- look around. Lie an A-bomb had dropped, there were fragments of things that might have been buildings, shrapnel and chaos. Like God had trashed the place in a tantrum.   
Your radio was only static. You didn’t have the energy or equilibrium to do a location charm. There was a sinking feeling in your stomach that told you no one else had made it. You drew the symbol that your people would recognize as you made your way out of what used to be Tampa. But you didn’t find any others on your way out, if anyone else had made it, there’d be a circle with an x drawn through it for you to see.  
Your warding tattoo of Michaels name was fading. He’d know you were here. Still wouldn’t be able to track you or angel whammy you, but he’d know. Your right arm was a tapestry of ruined skin stretching to the fingers and reapplying that sucker wasn’t going to be an option for a while. Even with painkillers.  
The mission had started off so promising. Resistance was finally getting its shit together, was finally ready to make a big move that you’d been pushing for. Tampa was an angel stronghold, a huge barracks for the winged nuisances at Fort MacDill. The plan was to bring in a sizable team-stealthily- and net them in with warding. Then cast them all out, trap them in the empty using their own power against them. You’d been excited to try to draining spell you’d used on Raphael on a larger scale, even the chances in the war by decimating their numbers.   
Massive angel death powered by their own grace. It had a certain poetry to it.   
You’d talked your last two cousins into coming out of hiding, that this was important enough to risk everything. That this could turn the tide of the war. You finally drummed up the energy to cast a location charm and when it fritzed, you knew. Jennifer and Blake had traveled a thousand miles to die. Because you asked. You had done this. You fell to your knees, sobbing now that the shock was wearing off. Everyone you loved was dead. Almost everyone.   
But you hadn’t even finished the warding before the angels caught on. Caught on too quickly you thought. You’d warded everyone. Same work up as you. You should have been able to pickpocket the fucking angels without them being wise. You made your way up the Hillsborough River in a boat, traveling mostly at night or when there was heavy cover. The first few days were slow, angels were still scanning and even covered in mud and debris for camouflage you still needed to be careful. You were grateful that you’d thought to sink a boat into the river before this mission, finding it again had been a bitch but now that foresight was paying off.   
You slowly made your way to the rally point, hoping that the spell and your gut was wrong. That there were people left, that your family would be there. It took you a few more days than agreed upon to get there -due to your injuries but when you arrived you were happy that it did. Antioch, FL, wasn’t much to write home about. It was a small town with tree cover and creeks. Your meeting place was in a tree clearing off Pemberton Drive and you circled it by way of Baker Creek. Scoping it out. You’d come too far to be taken due to carelessness.   
There was a man standing in the open, foolishly daring the world to give him problems. It looked like Casey- one of your crew, but he wasn’t dirty, wasn’t hurt. He looked as put together as when you’d arrived, too long black wavy hair tucked into a ball cap that had seen better days, rangier from lack of food- tall and skinny like a rail. He looked like someone you needed to take care of, always had a little waft of lost about him. Nobody had walked away from Tampa looking fresh as a daisy without help, especially not someone you needed to open cans for. You gritted your teeth together and waited.  
You didn’t have to wait long. Since you’d already been behind on the meet day, about a day after you arrived the angels showed up. You were perched in a tree with binoculars, pissed that you couldn’t hear the conversation. Not that it was hard to guess. Casey had betrayed you. He was waiting for survivors, waiting to turn them over too. The angels knew you were still alive, were pissed that Casey hadn’t been able to flush you out. He earned an angel blade to the chest as a reward. They left him there in disgust, before he was even dead, bleeding out. When they were clear, you walked up to witness Casey’s final moments, needing to ask him- “Was it worth it?”  
His eyes shot up to you, hands gripping needlessly at the hole in his chest. “You gotta help me man…”, He begged.  
“Why Casey? You’re dog food already. I just wanna know what was so goddamn important that it was worth ending up an angel skewer.”  
“Angels… just wanted you…had prisoners to trade…never thought your stupid fucking idea would work.”’ His breath was huffing out in the effort it took to talk, wheezing its death rattle. “Resistance…sold you out…called it…pawns sacrifice…sorry...didn’t think fuckers would get me too”, and with that he was gone, those last words leaking out with his last breath.   
The smoke from Tampa was putting out the stars, everything was grey and black. Even the branches of trees were heavy with shadows, the memory of birds wasn’t enough. Your already bleeding heart was hemorrhaging, so fucking close. Those motherfuckers- you could have, well it didn’t fucking matter anymore. Your one chance to go another way, win the war right, not fucking die. Gone.  
“FUUUCCKKK!” You screamed, tears already starting again. Years of war, of pushing back the other world, and fucking trusting people had fucked you. You kicked Casey’s body, pissed that he was in Heaven and there wasn’t shit you could do about it. Every-fuckin-body went to Heaven now. Even the assholes. You’d been so close, for a minute there, you’d actually believed you could win, the war- the struggle. Back at square one again. Back to hopelessness. You’d bought into the teamwork tag line. No fucking receipt to return it.   
Where do you go when you have nowhere else? No one else. You go back to the regrets, the one person you could never apologize to enough that you would both hate and love to see. You go back to Sam. You thought about sending a letter flaming it across the US to get to him, but you weren’t sure you wanted anyone else to know you were alive. Sam was still running the Resistance branch in Detroit as far as you knew. It was time. You were tired.   
And you’d been wrong. Wrong about being alone, about trust. About dying and love and all the things, the ideals, you’d put above Sam. Dying to be a martyr. Dying to be the hero this time. Sometimes I’m an arrogant fuck. Like you couldn’t have mourned him together. You’d trusted the wrong people at the wrong time. Alienated the rest into sacrificing you. But you still had time. Time to make shit right with Sam, to come clean. To let yourself have something, feel something, even though it could be taken from you. Because otherwise were you really alive? There wasn’t really a point without other people. Save the world just to be alone. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe you’d let Sam talk you out of this one, if he still gave a damn. 

Its gonna be a long fucking walk. 

 

 

Funeral Drums  
Chapter 9  
Detroit

You-  
Smashed glass glittering like stars in the daytime.   
New constellations of pain.  
The smoky salt scent- like old blood.   
The fire that lived in your arm, a favor from the angels. The perimeter sigils you’d been painting had melted off, power dripping lava onto your arm in the underpass. Climbing into the steel I-beams had saved you from the concussion from the fall of Tampa.   
Burns never really heal. Your skin remembers the fire, replays the heat for you like a broken record. Pulls at your skin like a broken promise. If your body was a temple- it was crumbling.  
Your heart closing off, another layer to the nesting doll, sealing off that room inside of yourself that loss lived in. Aching like phantom pain.   
That message scrawled onto the I-75 overpass sign that could only be for you, the letters ruddy brown. I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze; Yet -you have not returned to me.   
Michael was writing you now, a mockery of you and Deans beginning. That was Dean’s scrawl painted with gore. Like bible verses could shame you. He’d known you were there. You hoped he was fucking furious that he couldn’t find you. Four years hadn’t killed your resolve. Hadn’t made you run back to him.   
But seeing the burning remnant of Tampa- half flattened from some unseen chess move, had burned some of your zeal along with it.   
It pissed you off that you still saw these things in your sleep, that you still could. Kill the lights, drink yourself to sleep when you could find alcohol, cut new charms into your arms, none of these things took away the nightmares. Took away the loss. Dream Dean – or was it Michael- taunting you with the mistakes you made -ripping open old wounds. Quoting the bible like it meant something. That it could still move you when almost everyone you knew was dust, was a smear on the ground. Couldn’t even bury them. Not that you thought you could dig another grave anyway. But the ritual, the goodbye of it. That part was – well not nice- but normal. Gave you closure.   
There wasn’t even anything left to draw. You tried anyway, drew the fierce waves that had rolled over Tampa, drew the flash of light that burned it out like waning match. You drew Blake’s face, Jennifer’s; painted up like saints with golden halos - you didn’t know if it was mocking or not. Something that belonged on a church wall, a renaissance painting- lovingly gilded onto the Florida state line sign. The last of your blood ties, pushed into this mission by your desperation. Convinced by you to risk the exposure.  
Collateral damage. That term keeps bouncing around in your brain- harsh like that first drink of whiskey in the morning. No matter how far you got from Tampa, all the way into Michigan now, you couldn’t run far enough away from your failure.  
The war was getting harder, belts tightening everywhere. You were running out of people to fight. It was a numbers game and you were losing.   
Maybe loss was an illusion. Maybe you never really had anything.   
Sam-  
Sam was a gritty survivor. He could rough it in almost any environment, find supplies and live off the grid indefinitely if he needed to. His whole life had trained him for that.  
The rest of the world wasn’t so lucky. He was drowning in the sheer amount of people they lost due to lack of basic survival skills. He’d rescue people only to have them die of starvation, or they’d band into too large groups that drew angels, get burned out. A few times he’d get people out, try to teach them, only to have them put a bullet in their head after his big speech.   
Those were the hardest.   
The dogging sense of failure followed him worse than the yellow eyed demon. His ghosts were all the people he’d let down, all the people he couldn’t save. They outnumber even the stars. He tried naming them all, assigning them to constellations, but there were just too many- Jeff, Stacy, Dolores, and Niki sat in Cassiopeia. Steve, Emmett, and Ronin- all brothers- made up Orion’s belt. There was Tricia, Karlee, Brad, Mike, Sandy, and Cortney- a family forged at the end of the world by love instead of blood- in Perseus.  
And other names long forgotten.  
Dean knew all the constellations, he’d have been able to remember each name by heart, recite them like a prayer. But Sam forgot, with enough time and the immediacy of seemingly every situation, he couldn’t hold on to things anymore. He didn’t know what was worse, the dying -or the forgetting.  
He tried bringing people back to the bunker, but it wouldn’t let them in. Warding kept everyone out for a mile radius. Only Sam could even walk to the door. The welcome mat was always out for him. He missed Dean like a limb, the phantom pain from that missing part never went away. He missed you too, thought about being stuck in the bunker with you, thought about all the things he should have said, all the things he shouldn’t have said.  
He was part of the resistance now, his face recognizable from the news broadcast you’d done a lifetime ago on angel banishing. He led people, organized them, fought side by side with new friends and strangers. He’d touched both oceans for the millionth time, coast to coast fighting the good fight again. The angels seemed almost afraid to fight him, were always pulling their punches, leaving him openings. Being the brother of the destroyer had its benefits, Michael must be sentimental. Dean was still in there, enough to pull at Michaels strings, make him warn angels off Sam. He wondered if the string connecting him and Dean could ever be broken, he knew that Dean’s heart was stronger than any angel. That brotherhood couldn’t be erased by grace. Sam hoped that the thousand little moments that made them brothers- made them friends, choked Michael until he was drowning. He wondered if Michael would ever show up himself, fight Sam in the prize match that had been an eternity coming.   
After getting Detroit organized he was going to find you, mend fences, combine forces. This world was bad enough already, it didn’t need you guys at odds too. Maybe you could find a way past the warding…there wasn’t a lot you couldn’t do anymore from what he heard.  
You’d brought Raphael down. He wished he’d been there for that one.  
He’d get a letter from you once and a while, some witchy delivery where it would form from ashes in front of his face. Spooky at first. Made him suspicious. But usefulness outweighed morals now, and that was damn useful. If he could overlook Rowena in the past, he could forgive you this. There were so many things he wanted to tell you, the long years between you were filled with joy and tragedy both. He’d met someone, traveled the broken world with her, some of the links repairing themselves with the silent comfort of that alone. It wasn’t like having his brother, or you; it was something that was Sam’s alone, a secret he didn’t have to keep.   
As far as secrets went, he was going to find you, recite that damn letter that had haunted him, he’d committed it to memory without wanting to. It was something he should have done a long time ago, this last ghost that needed exorcising. He’d made his peace with everything else. Buried Dean without a body to burn. He still wanted to save him, still scoured what books were left for ideas, for anything, but it didn’t give him crying jags anymore, didn’t make him think about the word deserve like a curse. He was still alive -whether he deserved it or not. He may not have earned this life, or this small slice of almost happiness- but a love you could earn wasn’t love at all. That much he’d learned from Dean.  
He remembered the one time he and Dean had spoken of you, alone in the bunker after god knows how many beers.   
“I’m hands in the night. Things in the dark. In the morning its gone like a dream. That’s all I’m ever gonna be. But you, you’re the sun for her Sam. You’re the book club and fancy coffee guy. The normal guy”. After that little speech Dean had gotten up walked out, he was always walking away from conversations he didn’t want to have. Like physically leaving would leave behind the need, the unfinished business.   
Sam didn’t want that, never left things unsaid now that he had someone. Things left unsaid left holes, caused wounds that could never heal. He’d learned that from Dean too.   
Michael-   
Michael sat on the hood of the Chevelle-your Chevelle. It still smelled like you- he and Dean flinched simultaneously at the thought. He couldn’t bear it- couldn’t sit in the driver’s seat without you. He watched the stars climb the sky, unveiling themselves like a magician’s trick- gradually and immediately. He saw the patterns, named them along with Dean as he drank an unnecessary cold beer. Perseus, Cassiopeia, Orion, Ursa Major, Pegasus. The list went on and on. Deans knew them all. He kept coming back to the Chevelle, like it was a home he hadn’t lost. Like his visits would summon you up like a myth, like one of those star groupings would come to life from the repetition of their name.   
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice- Dean mocked mournfully.  
Michael wasn’t satisfied.  
There was a restlessness in him that had never been there before, one that had nothing to do with fighting or righteousness. Nothing to do with conquering. He wondered if being distilled into something so small had made him less, if he had carved something out to fit into Dean. That endless pit of more inside him wasn’t being filled by the battles here. That swift promise of death he loved to deliver was hollow. His purpose was flat- an unappetizing brew he drank anyway-feeling as barren and void as the scenery surrounding him. He would go to the bunker and stare at the door. Its emptiness echoed inside him, missing -like Dean’s heartbeat.   
Dean’s humanity would rear its ugly head sometimes, heartbeat pounding away in his chest after months of silence, awkward times after Deans detailed dreams, the hunger for food or drink that Michael would crave until capitulating.   
Looking at the pictures on the Chevelle did that to him- made him feel human. She’d scratched them into the paint, the horror of that had been so strong with Dean it had affected him, he’d almost repaired it as a knee jerk reaction. There were faces neither Dean nor he knew, her father maybe, that chin- the space around the eyes. Old and young- the detail made him know they were precious. That they were gone.   
He’d made trips up to heaven, carefully guarded secrets- visiting her family, watching them in their heavens as if it would solve the mystery of her. But no amount of watching her father build the Chevelle with her, of watching her grandmother bake or her mother laugh made him understand any better. These were all unremarkable people. There was no great lineage here. No explanation of why she was this way when she should have been a footnote in a book he’d found once and never read.  
She was always more than you thought she was. Worth dying for. Dean’s inner voice- both sad and proud, a broken violin.  
For once Michael agreed.  
And in this car shaped bubble they could pretend that she was coming back to them. Shape her name in their thoughts like a confession, like an apology and absolution all in one. Like she’d run her hands over their shoulders, invite them in. Like she could carve out all the restlessness inside them, make them comfortable in their own skin again.   
Like the song, Dean thinks; the one about love being the end- ‘Nothing can touch us, and nothing can harm us; no, nothing goes wrong anymore.’

You-  
You chased sunsets through a dozen states, only traveling at night. You missed the explosion of color warming your dashboard, the wind in your face from the cracked window, the smell of the Chevelle, of the Impala even. You walked through rain- rain at night is so much worse- the snow, the grazing heat. Daytime was a handful of hours you’d lost, conceding them to the angels. You remembered when you were hunting, the nights were so long, stretching into infinity with cramped muscles and waiting. But now the night was short, that cover of darkness was never long enough, you could never cover enough miles.   
You were constantly late to the party, arriving at meeting places already abandoned. You used the pitiful amount of pure witchcraft you had developed to send letters, whispering to them as you burned them, reforming where you told them to.   
You were on route to Detroit, you’d heard Sam was around the area. The trees gave you more cover to travel, dawn was meandering its way across the sky and you kept moving. The resistance had its uses for you, occasionally you worked with them-but not since Tampa. You felt like it was mostly there to band people together, the last community. You only wanted in on the master strokes, watching the king move across the board wiping out the pawns.   
Detroit had a huge survivor community, it was a network of cells that had managed to hold against the angels. Nobody took the Motor City that easily, the massive amount of urban sprawl and underground passages made it hard to search. Same as New York. But the last stand of Michigan needed supplies, needed ammo. Someone had to manage the making and dispersal of it. That’s what Sam was doing, running Detroit. He’d settled there about a year ago, staying too long in one place trying to do some good. That was the last information you’d gotten anyway. You heard he was shacked up with a girl. You smiled at the thought of it- love at the end of the world- such a Winchester move.   
You felt a sense of urgency, all the years between you collapsing, you just wanted to see Sam again, feel that human sense of belonging. Of family. Yours was long gone, you’d lost the last of your cousins in Tampa; bad info and worse planning. You wondered if eventually you’d run out of room for grief. If the cup that you thought had no bottom was actually filled to the brim. Spilling over.  
You made it to the outside of Detroit when you heard it, the beat of thousands of swords against the broken earth, the same sound you heard in Tampa. The sound of funeral drums, steady and mournful; the kind of sound you shouldn’t be able to hear and live. Each new strike shook the earth, lit up warding on the broken interstates that ringed the city. You started to run, even though you knew it was already too late, all you could do was watch.   
An orange glow started to emanate from what must be warding painted on the perimeter of the city, each strike made it brighter, harsher. The warding was melting away, your arm tingled in response from the remembered pain. Each beat made the circle of glowing light grow inwards towards the heart of the city. Each new ring of light turned the river to molten gold, cast the remains of the city flat with no shadows- overexposed film. The crescendo almost sounded like music, you thought you heard a horn blast and then there was just light. Light so saturated it almost had a taste, a sound.  
So much goddamn light.  
It blotted out the world.   
The city fell silently, flattened like a whisper smothered in the dark. Gone like it had never been. Even the earth was smooth. You felt like you had blinked and missed it, you kept staring like the city would rise up for your eyes to see. You searched for rubble, for foundations, for some rhyme or reason to the destruction. But there was nothing. It was like it had never been anything but smooth brown dirt for miles.   
They had been erased. Somehow that was worse.  
You cried then, and they were the kind of tears that cost something.

Sam-  
He had come to the farthest reach of interstate that he dared, trying to make out what the angels were doing. The reports coming in worried him. They had surrounded the entire city, not advancing, just out of range. He sat in his truck- it reminded him so much of Dad’s- gears in his mind turning, wondering if it was finally evac time.   
When the light started burning he knew it was too late for all that. He was too far from the river now, he gave a command via walkie talkie to start the alarm, hoping it wasn’t too late for some. The special warding that was supposed to prevent this was starting to melt away, each flash was one more second Detroit didn’t have. He got out of the truck- he was dying on his feet. He watched the end come one drum beat at a time. The kind of drum beat that called soldiers.   
He closed his eyes for a moment, the smell of the river combating with the smell of decay, the old and the new battling for dominance. He could hear the rising sound of panic- or was that just in his mind?  
He thought about the girl he’d left behind in Detroit proper, about the other one he’d never see again that traveled with his brother’s ghost around her neck like noose.   
All that love dying in the half–light.   
Love turning into bullets carved with names.   
Love unfinished like Dean’s beer on the map table that neither of you could bear to touch- like he was coming back for it.   
Love like everything lost came back to you.   
All of it a waste.   
Sam only had one regret, one fence he hadn’t mended. He thought about that letter, again with the damn letter, one he would never tell you about now. If the road to hell was paved with good intentions, what was the road to this new heaven paved with?   
The orange glow burning out the sigils grew brighter, grew to an unbearable white.   
The light swallowed him whole.

The world was a dying star, glowing brightest in its final moments, a barren rock hurdling through space. Smoke ribboning through the air, the stench of it permanently clung to your clothes, your hair. The whole world was on fire, ever burning. The only things that still stood were churches, this mockery of God's house, empty promises echoing in the half light. The marble saints stood in stony judgement and the stained glass told lies of mercy. Jesus may have walked the earth two millennia ago sowing peace, but Michael was here for the reaping. He was remaking the world in his image and that image was sterile and cold, an abandoned son. Quis ut deus- _Who is like God?_ Blood was the coin of the realm and mankind was paying God's debt.

 

You looked out into the skeletal remains of trees, dried out lakes, husks of buildings and thought, _This is paradise_?  _What a crock of shit._

 

You'd stopped hiding, traveling in the open during the day, slowly wandering west. You'd never seen Washington state, never touched those tall trees that seemed almost sentient and now they were gone. You wondered again about Michael, how he hadn't found you. He could have, _should have by now_ , picked apart Dean's brain until he had the recipe of you, a guidebook folded into a trap. The thought made you wince; even the ghost of Dean made you ache.

 

You picked your way through what was left of Kansas City Power and Light District. The roads were still there but the buildings were skeletal, twisting steel reaching for heaven, mock crosses. There was a rise where you could watch the whole city burn and fall, eerily silent, the time for screaming long over. There were great furrows in the earth, jagged open graves from humanity's last stand here; the char of angel wings mingling with the bleach white of bone into a terrible study in chiaroscuro. Your fingers started drawing it into the dirt before you realized what you were doing. Taking up a piece of charcoal, you sketched it on the overpass wall, larger than life, a memorial no one would ever see. The concrete was unforgiving, your attempts at shading with your fingers made the black shadows dark with blood. Each stroke was another layer of skin lost against the sandpaper of the wall. By the time you were finished, you were marked with soot and dirt from your hands to your elbow, and every inch of you were trembling and exhausted. You raked a hand across your face moving sweat but leaving war paint, lines slashing across your brow and cheekbone.

 

You walked on, the cracked two-lane asphalt snaking out before you. The earth itself had become unstable, and you knew, at any moment, it could open up and swallow you whole. Sometimes you wished it would. When you finally stopped for the night, you started a fire and dropped to sleep. You dreamed of him, again…always him… in a thousand different ways--behind the wheel of the Impala, sunglasses slipping down his nose; stretched out on the Impalas hood, looking at you instead of the stars, grabbing at your sketchbook and joking “ _Draw me like one of your French girls”_

**_Michael-_ **

Michael stood at the pinnacle of One Light Tower, in the penthouse there was a jagged hole where the floor to ceiling windows had once skirted the corner, and Flint hills spread out before him like a book he'd already read. Most of the buildings were war torn, steel twisting up and out, teeth in a silent scream. He closed Dean's eyes - _they we're still Dean’s-_ and drug in the scent of conquest, the bitter smoky sigh of a world gone quiet. He could, of course, search the entire city in an instant, spread his wings and let their long shadows -  _like bars of a cage-_ cover this paltry city. But he wanted to search himself, savoring this, navigating the same paths she'd walked like it would solve the riddle of her. That old fifth business _-someone who wasn’t a part of this story- not the hero or the villain_ , had his oaths flickering inside him like birds, the brush of their wings was a comfort and a burden. They had all the time in the world, plenty to unravel the last mystery, open the last door. He didn't want to rush it, after all- they were the last, her and him. Two by two, the last pair to enter the ark. Everything else was ash, was Paradise, heaven was clicking away like clockwork, fueled by horror and hope and death. Even hell was wasting away, intolerant of heaven’s new bright light, sun reaching even the darkest of places.

He'd followed her after she'd stopped hiding, all these long years of waiting and searching compressed into what someone else would describe as anxiety now that he could approach anytime he pleased. He'd trailed behind her, catching her smell on the wind _-it made him shudder with something like need-_ , studying the murals she left behind painted in ash. They moved him in a way he hadn't thought possible, internal mechanisms rusty from disuse creaking as their gears turned without any prompting from him. 

He blamed it on Dean; sometimes the line between them grew murky. He remembered taking this body, this unconquerable flesh driving him.

At the beginning, this body was strange, still so Dean even with Michael at the wheel. Every nerve ending still flared with guilt, self-loathing, and doubt. He’d pushed Dean as far to the background as he could, locking him in a small box, but Dean was always scratching his way out. Initially, Michael didn’t just have Dean’s eyes, he had his perception. 

 

He saw the world the way Dean saw it, took pleasure in small trifles when Dean would, still drove the Impala even though he could _fly._ It felt like flying, driving this car. He never felt as free as he did compacted into this slow outdated human means of transportation. He’d even eaten a cheeseburger, been halfway through it before he’d known what he was doing. This body was tied to Dean, to his wants and needs and fears the way he’d never seen before. Michael was afraid that it was changing him, walking around in Dean’s shoes. He was afraid Dean would surround him until there was nothing left, that the pit inside Dean was big enough to swallow him whole.

He'd mostly gotten that under control, months of wills clashing, of missions wasted.

The Impala was gone now, there wasn't enough road left in most places to drive it anyway. He'd left it at the Bunker, tucked it away in that museum, the only place untouched by angels on the planet, a homage to humanity, a Promise kept. But his caged bird hadn't sung, she’d just fled the coop so readily it made him grit his teeth in memory. How she’d gotten out at all intrigued him. No force on heaven or earth had stood long against his will. No one but her. 

_Stay where I put you._

But here, finally, at the end of everything, she was going back, closing the circle.

 

He studied the trail of her foot prints through the dirt and ash, the right leg was still dragging a bit, the gait stiff and uneven, a final gift from Raphael before she'd ended him. The Eastern seaboard had quaked with the aftershocks; the scene had been painted with her blood and tinged with his surprise that she'd been able to pull it off. His lips firmed into a line, remembering the night in St. Louis under the fallen arch. He'd tried to heal her from afar while she slept and his power had slapped back at him. She'd warded herself against him _specifically,_ wouldn't even give him the opportunity to do this small kindness, and it annoyed _-no, hurt- that’s called hurt--_ him She'd finally used his name to profane it, twist it against him, the marks on her arm glowing, Quis ut Deus, Quis ut Deus, winding in a spiral. The only two living creatures wandering the earth and she shut him out. _Dean laughed, joyless at Michael’s thought._

Dean rose to the surface, warring emotions swirling and making Michael's head ache. Pride and fear and worry choked him, not as alien as it once was.

 

**_You-_ **

Your right leg fucking throbbed; the muscle was tight and hot from inactivity; the knee was always locking up after you slept. You grimaced as you forcefully tried rubbing it out, but it didn't bend all the way anymore and there were still, in the words of Robert Frost, miles to go before you sleep. The fire had died down; the cutting wind was creeping into your bones, old injuries flaring up in the cold morning. You'd run out of coffee long ago, you missed the morning ritual of it and the caffeine it provided, just the sheer normalcy of it. Your back and neck cracked, your hip, elbow and knees following as you struggled up, the sound echoing for a moment before rushing off with the wind. The sun was grey and too bright, unnatural in its lack of warmth and comfort. Everything carried Michael’s touch now, if you could see the world from space, the grooves and scars torn into it would form his thumbprint. You never got used to the quiet, the utter lack of sound this new world produced. You missed the sounds of birds- _rustling wings were cringe-worthy now_ , even crickets, although the damn things had driven you crazy before. You’d taken it all for granted, never missed it until it was gone. The silence provided no distractions from the dreams that still chased you. They stayed with you, rising like bile until the need to expel them drove you to again pick up charcoal and sketch the line of his body- that subtle curve of spine, the sleep tossed hair, the slimmest of profiles-his face barely peeking out over his shoulder. You'd drawn him everywhere; he haunted the broken world much like he haunted your dreams. A ghost, an idea, a glory turned nightmare. He was your God, and God was dead. The piece of charcoal dropped from your cramping fingers and rolled away.

 

**_You-_ **

The miles seemed short; each dusty step took you closer and now that you were in Kansas this seemed like a fool’s errand. The rolling land smoothed out, the Flint hills falling away and they sky seemed so much bigger, that washed out blue was a strange comfort. There wasn't much as far as supplies, everywhere you stopped was almost picked clean. You wandered off the highway, lingering miles from the road, searching houses. Some canned green beans are all you turned up. One thing the magic couldn’t take away, that gut knotting hunger that haunted your every step for years, you couldn’t remember a time without that wrenching barrenness inside you. You finally stopped in Lawrence, you seen the end, now it seemed fitting to go back to the beginning. You spread your map over the concrete, running your fingers over the lines to find something Dean had only mentioned once in passing. A street name. After a few bites of green beans, _you had to ration after all_ , you strode on. You remembered the house, Dean had squirreled away pictures in his cedar box, a faded family, a perfectly respectable two story framed by a tree perfect for a tire swing.

 

When you finally found it, it looked like an empty shell, remarkably unremarkable. Someone had hung that tire swing after all, now it barely dangled, ruining under dry rot. Shutters barely hung on, some had already fallen into the dirt. Just another broken sanctuary, the illusion of safety, warmth gone. The door hung open- was it a sign of welcome or a warning?  The part of you, that suspicious and keyed up part flared up once and was gone. Your give a shit meter was empty. You step tested the porch first, the falling apron seemed like it would hold your weight.

 

 You caught a glimpse of yourself in the shattered remains of a window, paint peeling along the trim, the dust obscuring fine details but the ruddy streaks down your face stood out. Your cheekbones were so defined they could cut glass, feeling the looseness in your clothes wasn't the same as seeing this refugee in a dirty mirror. You reached up and touched your face, watching the reflection wondering if it was real, if it was still you. You looked fierce, wild even. But inside you were just grey, you couldn't save the world, couldn't save Sam, and certainly couldn't save Dean. All the things left undone… that great driving hope inside you had burned out the longer you fought to beat back the tide with a broom. You weren't Dean, hell you weren't even Sam; that Winchester blood was the stuff of hero's- steel strengthened in fire tempered by loss. You'd grown brittle with blows, not strong.

 

The house too had seen loss, more than once, but no one was left to build it back up again. Your sardonic grin at the comparison, _no one was left to build you back up again_ _either_ , was only a momentary comfort, the smile sat ill on your face. You searched the house for food and supplies more out of habit then hope, finding nothing and finishing your green beans in spite of the rules of ration you'd set. Sleep didn't come easy, this place felt haunted even though you know there weren't any wandering souls left to haunt the place. 

**_Michael-_ **

Michael stared at the house, bathed in the scant light of a sickly moon. Just looking at it filled him with unease, coming apart at the seams with flashes of memories in Deans head. He couldn't bring himself to enter that place even if he'd wanted to. He knew she was inside, he just didn't understand the why's of it. It was like staring at the portrait she'd drawn outside of the city, seeing this face that was his and not his. She'd drawn him everywhere; he'd thought for a while that she was taunting him, making him see this face crop up everywhere he went. Angels didn't look into mirrors, they never wanted to admire their vessel out of vanity, could never see their own face reflected. Looking in a mirror felt wrong, like someone pouring water over it distorting the reflection. But he'd seen Dean, seen himself, in Reno, Derry, Vegas, Baltimore. 5,467 drawings of Dean. And only one of him.  He could feel their eyes on him even now. Especially that portrait of him- the Michael of legend- Dean's comet, red slashes of a semitransparent brushstroke over the eyes- _no hint of Dean left in that cold gaze_ , the hint of the lightest blue shadow of wings in the long unblinking white, a tarnished crown. Chess board toppled at his feet, queen missing. That one he'd hurled into the ocean, an entire section of wall ripped from its foundation, the angels tittering over his rage. Bricks flying like shrapnel.

 

**_You-_ **

The next few mornings came, as they always did, whether you wanted it to or not. Before you knew it, you were up and leaving, a freshly drawn portrait of Dean now decorated every wall of the house, him and Sam laughing together, covered in blood in Purgatory, a dozen vignettes of his life, his story written on the walls of where he was born _. Full circle again_. You began that final walk home, that trail of tears, that green mile. You looked at everything, each blade of yellowing grass, each rolling hill, and every lonely house standing sentinel and committed it to memory. Your memory was long now; you felt the burden of being the last to carry it. You passed through Topeka, visited your cousin's house that was blessedly empty, but picked up his mini bike. This place was from a past life, one you only remembered in your dreams. Your family was long gone; the first wave of the apocalypse has wiped them clean before you’d ever reached them. The time it had taken you to escape the bunker and Michael’s holding spell- _did angels consider them spells_? - had put you months behind. You and Sam had stopped here and outside of St. Louis, years before, looking for your people. But you were far too late to save the ones you had left. What hunting hadn’t taken from you, Michael’s war had torn apart. You kissed your fingers before touching them to the door- Hail and farewell.

 

Your leg was giving you fits, and the meter on your soul was running on empty. You wanted to get there first, have a little time for yourself. You strapped on a few gallons of gas, calculating the distance. You'd make it. Maybe on fumes but you'd make it. You missed the Chevelle like a limb, ached for the feel of the steering wheel- that smooth leather warm in your hands. But this wasn't bad either. Wind in your hair, full tank of gas, and Jesus Christ the speed of it. The bowing trees and dying fields raced by, the picture of it kinder in that blurry haze a full throttle provided. You were going faster than what was probably smart, burning gas and dodging tires, dead cars, and general disarray littering the road, but for once you didn't care. On a long stretch of clear road, you could almost close your eyes and pretend that things were normal. Sure the sweat made your clothes stick to you and chilled parts of you that hadn't seen daylight in a while, but it was worth it. You laughed, quietly at first _-guilty,_ but the miles wore on and the high from two wheels and an engine between your legs never wore off _. Man, it had been awhile since anything had been between your legs_ , the thought made you guffaw with fresh peals of laughter, slightly hysterical.

 

You stopped somewhere outside of Bala, flush with victory over the beef jerky you'd found, and drew a larger than life portrait of Dean laughing with you. The two-lane blacktop was smooth and unbroken and that chalk set you'd found in Topeka was burning a hole in your bag for want of use. In Asherville you found a soda, an actual Dr. Pepper still in the can, and cigarettes- a full pack. You smoked one- head light and buzzing from it- while savoring the Dr. Pepper and watched the sun go down for the millionth time. That was one thing Michael couldn't destroy, a gift the world kept giving you even though it was dying. The sky flared out in Burnt Umber oranges and Indian reds, rich Ultramarine purple and Prussian blue bruises, and the slimmest of Cadmium yellow in between. For a single moment you mourned the loss of it, the loss of everything, down to the paint you didn't have to dash it down, keep it forever. You painted it in your mind, felt the texture of the brush in your hand, the strokes it would take to form it. Your last night on earth and you fell asleep painting.

 

**_Michael-_ **

Michael studied the drawing from the air; the strokes had more energy, more care than he had seen in a long time. He was learning her language, deciphering things from the marks she made. This wasn't frenzy, he’d seen those mad, harsh marks; these were deliberate, happy. This was the first time she'd drawn herself into the picture, the face of her past anyway. She looked...soft. Head tilted back but still looking at Dean. The curve of her jaw was sharper now, the cheekbones more prominent. Dean was relaxed; as few had seen him, open in a way that Michael had never guessed. He could almost hear their laughter and it soured his insides. Twenty feet of pavement scrawled in chalk, fragile as the picture it formed. A moment long gone that the rain would wash away.

 

Michael clenched his fist, trying to regain control, order. The petty urge to wipe it away before it's time came over him, silence that laughter, quelled after a few deep breaths and his infinite patience. It took longer; minutes more of clenched fists and tightened jaw, to smother the urge to smooth his fingers over the lines that made up her face, memorize them with his fingertips like it was smooth skin instead of baking asphalt. His struggle manifested, cooking the air around him until the chalk yellowed on the pavement. This human emotion, this _weakness_ would pass. He'd go back, close the circle, keep the bargain and this would be over. He'dshed this skin; slough off the fleshy chains that came with it, the needs of a body and mind he wasn't built to feel. He'd be free, an _angel_ again. Dean would be in paradise, his memory and hers wiped clean, a reward. He hated this; it seemed like a prison for him as much as Dean. It was a constant cycle of indulging and then the inevitable guilt, the rage afterwards. He'd wiped away the sins of the world but couldn't forgive his own. If Father were here would he be disappointed? The question his name bore took a bitter cast, a wry smirk- _who is like God?_ God had named him with a test, a challenge, and he was failing. Maybe it was his turn to be the prodigal son, come home after this was over and be cleansed, sins forgiven. His father loved Lucifer best, he knew it, had always known. Choice over blind obedience, the sinner over the good son, and he'd _always_ been the good son. He'd never understood, had secretly been vexed, until now. Watching her come home, _choose_ to return, well that filled him with a sense of satisfaction that he'd been lacking the entire apocalypse.

 

 

**_You-_ **

You looked at the door, the heavy steel looked like home, and the stairs arched up like a welcome mat. You laid your palm against the door, then your cheek- afraid to enter, afraid that the ghosts of what was would drag you down. You reached into your shirt and grabbed the key you'd carried all these years around your neck, your insurance policy, your get out of jail free card. The sounds of the tumblers clicking made your knees weak. When you stepped in you realized that ghosts would have been better than this stillness, the absence of voices more damning. It looked exactly the same, not even dust to denote the time passed. There was Dean's unfinished beer on the map table, the overturned table in the library from your frustrations after Dean became something else. You ran your fingertips over everything, picking up Dean's beer to put your mouth where his had been. It was still impossibly cold, tasted like it had just been opened. You ran your hands over the books in the library, greeting old friends. The kitchen sang its siren song to you, you ate fruit Sam had left, not rotted after five years. _Angels are better than refrigerators._ After that an actual sandwich, _god it made your eyes roll back in your head_ , made your jaw ache from chewing. You could only eat half; your shrunken stomach was protesting already.

Your old room was exactly how you'd left it, a messy disarray of whirlwind packing; sketches of symbols tucked here and there, a pile of books on every flat surface. Any and all references to Enochian magic, all in one place. It made your tattoos tingle, made you remember tapping into your soul that first time to break the tether between you and this place, this gilded cage tarnished by memory. You grabbed some clothes, they still smelled like laundry- _oh lord you had missed that too_ ; you meant to head for the showers when you passed the door to Room 11. His room. The door was cracked and when you pushed it open it still smelled like him, the bed was still unmade, a lifetime of hotel rooms making the sheets unruly. And for the last time, you cried over what you'd lost, what never came to be, hands fisting in the blanket helplessly.

**_Michael-_ **

Michael waited in the main area, surveying the map table that no longer matched reality. No more political lines, no more petty differences. He held his hand out, peering at the table in between his fingers, watched it disappear as he made a fist -a victorious smile splitting his face unnaturally wide.  He could hear the shower from here, gave her time to collect herself before confronting him. His gaze lit on the mirror above the small sink and the reflection moved without him, crossing his arms and staring him down. Dean may not have been able to outlast hell but he'd given Michael no shortage of misery in five years with his indomitable will. He heard the shower cut off and anticipation lit his skin in an alarmingly human way.

 

**_You-_ **

You look at him, grace running through his veins like fire, radiating glory, the left hand of God. He’s so much more than he was, there's a light burning behind his eyes and it's _blinding._ But he's also so much _less_ , there's no heartbeat to anchor him, his knuckles are unbroken perfect skin like Dean's never were; and the light behind his eyes is cold, not warm. His hair is cropped too close to his head, like a war boy searching for Valhalla. Witness me. That direct stare Dean could never pull off unless he was mad; but that smell, that traitorous memory enhancer, all pine and fresh air and musky gun oil, that’s still there. It confuses your body, making it think all the wrong things. There were miles of roads between you and someone had lost the map.

 

He kept raising his hand, a broken toy, a scratched record, reaching out and never connecting. You built your resolve to follow through with this last plan, the last act of defiance, this Hail Mary. You didn't want to die, even after this hell on Earth, seeing the man you loved disappear. But the plans laid we're concrete, the spell already rising and making your soul twitch, batteries almost drained. Only one trick left, a one hit wonder to turn back the clock, take it all back.

"You aren't well.” Michael spoke and the voice was right but wrong, played in the wrong key.

**_Michael-_ **

He saw the realization flicker over her face, frowning because she knew it was him and not Dean. He looked at her and ached, this hollow guilty feeling never resting comfortably in his skin. He preferred her with her armor on, those defiant streaks painted on her face. A soldier. This soft clean version made something tighten in his chest. He raised his arms in welcome, reaching for her, Dean taking over before he could react. 

 

Michael let himself fade to the background, riding shotgun as Dean folded her into his arms, fitting her in like a missing piece. In all the years since he’d come to this world, they had never touched and Michael finally understood why his arms felt empty even holding the lance or sword. He'd meant to take her to heaven now, body and soul, a worthy adversary. The last name on the list crossed out. A promise kept. The writing on his arms tingled. It was whispering- snaking out to touch her, to complete the oath. Dean had made him write his promises in their skin, his grace even, an unbreakable vow to not destroy her soul, or Sam’s, or be complacent in that action, a contract to rival one of Crowley’s from Dean’s memory. But Dean and she had earned this moment and a few more. And he wanted this more than he'd ever been willing to admit. Fighting her, never finding her, watching the apocalypse stretch out to five years instead of one, she'd earned his grudging respect.

 

In the bunker five long years ago, he’d finally cornered Dean, promised to erase her from the book of Life if Dean didn’t let him in. He'd declared to Dean “ _I'll write my name inside you so no one else can ever live there, I'll make your body a haunted house filled with locked doors, and you'll thank me for it.”_ But her name had already been etched inside Dean, along Sam's, graffiti so deep Michael’s grace had never been able to burn it out. And all the locked doors were Dean's. Michael had visited Castiel in his cell - _you didn’t kill as good soldier when you could wait him out_ \- numerous times, discussing vessels, emotions, and Dean. Castiel hadn't wanted to talk at first, but this face had worn him down. That and Castiel could see Dean coming through, quizzed Michael about it repeatedly. Castiel had never felt his vessel’s emotions, never lost motor control, except when in presence of a horseman.

 

Yet, this unimportant human; this woman who could be wiped away without any cosmic consequence, had the power to rewrite Michael’s DNA. She burned new pathways in him, forging a connection through Dean. He wanted to feel her touch on their skin then unwrap her like a present, carve her into his memory instead of the tattered secondhand of Dean's. They stood there awhile Michael unfolding his wings around them instinctively, two men who loved the same woman with the same heart. She seemed so much more fragile, almost weightless in his arms, the hollows of her bones pushing up through her skin. The entire top of her back and shoulders were rippled with layered scars, so deep and vicious it made Dean pause. She sighed and whispered, "Texarkana- got whipped by a mob. Sam saved my life." Michael growled, rising but Dean kissed her then, their mouth moving over hers and flavored by the bitterness of salty tears, his or hers he didn't know. The thrill of it sent lightening through Michael, she knew she was kissing him as well as Dean and it didn't stop her. She looked at him then, like she knew what he was thinking, could see past Dean to Michaels’ thoughts. Michael let himself retreat more into Dean’s flesh, the light behind Dean's eyes fading back to the simple green, hiding from her, from the deep gaze that laid him bare.

 

"You look like shit sweetheart.” Dean said and she laughed, mirthless. 

He smoothed over her collarbone, could trace it to the joint, the flesh sunk around it; her ribs were piano keys and he could feel the jut of her hip protruding, could trace the outline of it like he'd dug up a skeleton to salt and burn. Her old clothes hung off of her, the lounge pants were tied so tight the material was scrunched up around the bow. He felt numerous hard ridges of scars, all new, and wanted the stories behind each one that he hadn't sewn up. One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-Seven Days. That’s how long he’d waited to touch her again. He dropped to his knees and felt through her pants to the serpentine scar that bisected her knee, a retiring injury that travelled her leg from thigh to ankle. Her arms were covered in scrawled tattoos, a clash of symbols and Enochian that Michael itched to read. Michael saw again his name in Latin, the endless spiral and felt a strange satisfaction now at the brand. But Dean didn't have to time for that. He looked up at her, prostrate at her mercy, apologies in his eyes that would never be spoken. Rankling Michael- _We don't need to explain-_ Dean cut him off, shutting Michael out to both their surprise. This was Dean's God, and he would pray however he wished.

_Sam._ Dean asked without asking.

She just shook her head once, tight. Dean guessed he had Michael to thank for that, blinding him to his brother’s ultimate fate, not making him witness it. Dean was tired. He was _done._

_No looking gift horses in the mouth._

 

Dean kept his eyes on hers, constantly asking as he started to pull the drawstring of her pants, the cloth rubbing loud in the silent room. She stared back with something resembling tenderness, no denial. Her pants fell with a whisper and he kissed the deep vee of her hip while curling his hands around the bottom of her tank top. She stopped him, gently. Still a locked door there.  Michael seethed internally, wanting to see all of her, stuck in the peanut gallery but afraid to rise up and frighten her off. Feeling her in real time was enough for now. They had time, had _eternity._ He didn't have to have it his way this maiden voyage. Her fingers found their hair, kneaded it gently and causing a ripple effect to dance down their spine. She traced the outer edge of their ear, fingernail barely scraping and it made everything tighten. Dean kissed his way up her torso, teeth gently scraping over her breast through the cloth, nipple pebbling beneath to meet him. She ran her hands down his flannel, parting it and pushing it back from his shoulders, still broad like they could carry anything, any weight. He impatiently ripped off the T-shirt below it his hands starving for her even during that brief interlude. The pants followed and they stood there staring at each other silently, too many words to say to choose just a few. She touched his face, his neck memorizing every piece, drawing him, bringing her art to life like Galatea.

 Dean picked her up bridal style, fusing their mouths together as he found his way through the bunker to his room. It looked exactly how he'd left it, the normalcy of it almost breaking the spell of the moment. A time capsule, like the last 5 years hadn't happened. He placed her on the bed, no urgency in his movements, just savoring every inch of her. The last pieces of clothing slid off, all except that tank top, the preservation of no. When he finally moved atop her, his thighs insistently spreading hers, the smell at the curve of her neck almost undid him.

 

In all his time on earth, Michael had never taken a woman, it was too base, too carnal, and this body already felt married to someone else, its loyalty was absolute. Sliding home inside her filled them both with awe, a trembling power, a humbling grace. Like standing in front of God, Michael realized. In a dance as old as time he worshipped her like he had his father, but better, more hands on, interactive, reciprocal. He felt the earth move and broken links repair themselves. This was something worth preserving; this was mankind's link to the Divine. Her name was a benediction; her face was a forbidden idol, worth burning for. They wrapped their fingers in her hair, the seeming miles of it; her face, her shoulders, breasts, rediscovering a lost country. Michael and Dean blended seamlessly together for the first time since the possession. They shared one purpose _finally._ They moved inside her as one. Neither could stand to pull all the way out, leave her body, their slow thrusts were shallow. Dean had more experience with this sort of thing and he began to pull out to the tip, teasing her with it and winning a smile and a groan. That secret smile made something crack inside them, the barriers that God made between angel and man falling away and Michael didn't just experience Dean's love for her; he _loved her_. He loved her with this body, with everything inside him, the driving force behind his actions reshaping to accommodate her. He was no longer a good son first, no longer married to the mission, to the plan his father had laid out. He was whatever she would need him to be, a hundred firing pistons in his brain firing to figure out what he could do, what he could  _be,_ for her.

****

**_You-_ **

You stopped him; hand on his chest and spoke, “Dean. _Michael._ Remember your oath." You were afraid, your heart was pounding away in your chest, your words were stuttered around your closing throat. This was it, your moment. Time to make Michael break some promises. Time to break yours to Dean.

_**Michael-** _

_Michaels’ heart broke in a thousand different ways. Blood from a stone._ Even now she only saw him as an obstacle.

 

The writing flared up on their arms illuminating the room in a golden light from under their skin. Still inside her, her body wrapped around him fiercely on the verge of toppling him over the edge, drowning in love or lust, overwhelmed by the sensation and emotion of not just sex but her, he almost didn't register her reaching underneath her tank top, grasping the small silver shard taped there.

****

**_You-_ **

You grabbed his hand, wrapping it around the sliver of angel blade and grimaced as you forced him to cut you- technically finishing a cut you began much earlier; closing a circle in a complicated open wound, a confusion of layered symbols that spread over your torso that you’d carved in the shower. It had taken you years to come up with the combination, you’d torn through angels and books with equal fervor.  When he made the lines connect, blood seeping from them, they lit up the room. A thousand moments flitted through your mind, all those dreams of what was and what could have been. Yeah, you deserved better, but the world deserved a second chance more. Dean deserved more. This was your chance to change history, to go back and redo the last five years, to trap Michael in his own world, one he’d already broken and leave yours alone.

**_Michael-_ **

 Each symbol was gleaming a faded blue, like her eyes. They both stared dumbly -  _A vivid image flashed in their shared mind- that drawing in Baltimore, the hated portrait with the red slashed eyes, those scattered chess pieces. Without the queen the king was useless-_ as she reached out with her other hand and caressed their face.

 

"I love you." She said, finally, the roar of impending shit hitting the fan almost quiet below the resolution of her voice. "If there was a world for me after this, I'd love you then. Always."

The words that had never been spoken, a verbal way of holding on in the moment they had to let go. She flared out and was gone. The glow faded from her, and her eyes went vacant. They were both stunned, and the writing that bound them together, the promises that sealed the fate of the world, unraveled.

 

****

**_Dean-_ **

Dean felt Michael rip from his consciousness, felt her body cool beneath his before being ripped from there, and tossed into a vortex. The vertigo hummed through him when he felt slammed back into his body, stomach clenching. He flexed his hands, felt Michael behind a wall, a hurricane in a bottle. Dean was back in the driver's seat as he watched almost in slow motion as a fierce blue light blasted Michael from him and the bunker, invitation rescinded, a rip in the universe chewing him up and spitting him out the other side. Back home.

Another locked door. The last one.

 

 Dean looked over and impossibly saw Sam pinned to the wall.  Dean looked at his brother like he was a ghost. Sam unfroze; Michael's will no longer holding him as Dean's past and present collided. _Total Back to the Future moment_. Dean stared uncomprehendingly around him, finally landing on her body, sprawled and empty. He was down in front of her before he realized what he was doing, all the gauntness gone, all scars he'd just felt erased, her old self but a shell. He went on his knees, arms up against the wall, head bowed over her, penitent. But she stayed still, silent, those eyes staring up at nothing. Dean let out a roar then, animal and hoarse, while Sam tried to pull her free, do CPR, do anything.

 

_A little while after-_

 

Dean and Sam sat in the bunker, both alive and themselves again, beers almost untouched, not wanting to celebrate the Pyrrhic victory. Everything had gone back, the last five years erased, the world was still green and alive as it was the day Michael had initially come to them, broken free of his dimension and given Dean an ultimatum.  Dean's head hung with the weight of memories, of almost and never and the five years lost between them that Sam didn't carry. On the longest day of his life, one he'd now had to live twice he was unyielding on one thing.

_Dean had refused to burn the body._

 

They’d lain her on her bed in her room, carefully wrapped in linen and surrounded by the research that had made her death possible; make this backwards trip- this undoing possible. The symbols we're still there, carved carefully into her torso, that complicated layered magic that had taken years to perfect, combining the right ingredients. Sam had studied them with Cas at length, trying to solve the riddle of how this had been accomplished. Cas was checking heaven now, the parts he could access, looking for answers now that he was free. They had talked for hours, argued more like, and Cas and Dean carried the weight of those missing years alone. To Sam Michael showing up was fresh, had literally just happened. It had taken awhile to bring him up to speed.

 

"I dunno Dean… Cas said she used Enochian magic, powered by her soul...what if there isn't anything left to bring back? You said that's what broke your deal with Michael-him erasing her, destroying her soul. And it had to take major mojo to throw us in a Time Warp and lock the rift after."

 

"Sam. I know the odds here...I just think if she were gone, I mean really gone, I'd know." Dean’s hands still shook slightly. He didn’t know if it was because it was still so strange, being in control, or from the weight of his words.

 

“ **Love isn’t always enough. “**   Sam said, obviously at war with giving his brother a harsh truth 

**Yeah, it is Sammy.  You go without it long enough and you realize it’s everything.”**  It’s what makes the world turn, saves it. If it could prevent the apocalypse, it could bring her back. They just had to find a way. 

 


End file.
